What has to happen is that someone else has to be appointed by the court as the personal representative and finish the probate of the estate.
Who died and are there any children of the deceased that would want to administer the estate?
Does everyone want to administer the estate or no one wants the job?
Is there money in the estate - or are assets greater than liabilities?
It would seem that you would be and are the logical choice to finalize the administration of the estate.
So, what you must do is file a petition with the probate court for you to be named the administrator of the estate of ______ (your mother). Within the petition explain what has happened with the estate (who was the decedent, who were the heirs, when it was opened, what the estate consisted of, who started the administration) and that the administrator of the estate has died and the estate administration needs to be completed. As such, you would like to be the estate administrator to finalize the estate.
What you should do is contact the probate court and ask when you can present the petition. Thereafter, you need to serve copies of the petition on all other heirs and inform them of when your going to present the petition before the probate court.
If no one objects (or even if they do object) the court will appoint you the administrator of the estate to wrap up matters and close it out.
Attorney
19 years experience in estate and trust planning, probate, and wills