askye, what a mess. I'm sorry your brother has to deal with all of this, and I feel awful for your nephew.

And the xSIL's mother's boyfriend is now calling my brother asking him to drop this, just pay the money otherwise it's going to ruin the relationship between her family and E. Of course it's been MONTHS since they've seen or had any contact with E.

He can't owe them money. Unless he co-signed for something, or agreed to financial responsibility for something (ie, if he owed her money for child support, or signed a loan with her, or agreed to pay her hospital bill). If someone dies owing money, it can be taken out of what they've got left, so their next of kin might not inherit anything, but he shouldn't owe anyone money unless he got some from the estate. (That's obviously a separate question of getting them off his ass, but...).

askye, I can't even.

Ordinarily I don't use that particular turn of phrase, but I think it fits here.

So instead of getting an inheritance my nephew (well his lawyer) gets a bill because the estate owes either xSIL's mother or sister money for something.

Yeah, I was going to say what meara said. Something sounds really shifty, and if your brother's lawyer doesn't see that right away, he might want to find a new one.

So instead of getting an inheritance my nephew (well his lawyer) gets a bill because the estate owes either xSIL's mother or sister money for something.

Yeah, no. I was an executor for my dad's estate. If I recall correctly (and it may vary from state to state), executors can claim a percentage (maybe 6%? I forget) of any income (interest, rents, etc.) from the estate, and a percentage of the principle. If there's no money in the estate then they are out of luck. But their check writing hand won't get too much of a workout, so it kinda evens out. Since Dad's estate was evenly divided between my sister and me, I didn't claim anything. It would have been one more thing to track, and Dad's estate wasn't exactly huge (he and Mom were teachers). This way, the math was easier. Subtract all final bills, divide whatever's left by two, send copies to the lawyer, done.

ETA: I am not a lawer.

My brother's lawyer is on top of this. She was the one who saw that all their accounting and itemization was off and sent everything back to be redone.

The "money owed" thing is just weird. I don't know how much money my xSIL had when she passed but from what I understand about HALF of that amount was spent on late fees and penalties to the IRS. Also the fees for the storage units were paid out of the estate and also her sister was paid about $6000 for doing something that was with the photography business, I think finishing up the photos/wedding albums for the clients who hadn't received them.

E also lost out on some of the social security benefits right after his mother's death because his crappy grandmother didn't fill paperwork in a timely manner.

Originally my brother was going to fight to be the executor of the estate but dropped that because he was so overwhelmed and he trusted his former MIL to do the right thing.

Obviously this trust was misplaced.

((((askye and family)))) I'm no expert on estates law. But yeah, something sounds funny here. (And as a former litigator, I wonder whether the executor might be liable for the fees and penalties.)

I'd like to go on record that I do not like global weirdening.

A little nerdy, but hey, with this bunch. Was watching H2 network, a show on word origins. They were talking about how many of our words "come from the Vikings". The one I found most intersting was Bluetooth (as in how your phone talks to your car, or speakers, etc).

From wikipedia:

The word "Bluetooth" is an anglicized version of the Scandinavian Blåtand/Blåtann, (Old Norse blátǫnn) the epithet of the tenth-century king Harald Bluetooth who united dissonant Danish tribes into a single kingdom, according to a legend, introducing Christianity as well. The idea of this name was proposed in 1997 by Jim Kardach who developed a system that would allow mobile phones to communicate with computers. At the time of this proposal he was reading Frans G. Bengtsson's historical novel The Long Ships about Vikings and king Harald Bluetooth.[7][8] The implication is that Bluetooth does the same with communications protocols, uniting them into one universal standard.

The logo description:

The Bluetooth logo is a bind rune merging the Younger Futhark runes (Hagall) (ᚼ) and (Bjarkan) (ᛒ), Harald's initials.

[link]

I always thought the Bluetooth logo looked like a rune. Cool.