Looking for a good litigation attorney for Probate

[HuserTT]

We have a sibling executor of an estate that is playing games with us. Not showing a true accounting of assets. Not giving us updates as to what he's doing with our estate. The WILL was simple to split everything equally. The trouble lies with the real estate. The executor and I both want a property. He is controlling all matters of this small apartment complex, keeping me and my other siblings completely in the dark. What I have found out is he is basing the value (and wants to make a bid) bases off an appraisal of June 2020. The real estate has gone way up since then. What I have discovered based off of Zillow is that 2 units have been completely remodeled and money from a stock brokerage (all cash that was supposed to be distributed in February) that I am certain is being used to do this. The executor is hiding his actions and intentions of this, as all communications have been cut off.

My belief is he is hiding the remodel, using the estate distribution money to remodel the apartments, and wants to keep an unremodeled appraised value of June of 2020, have me and him bid on it, knowing that I will bid lower than him with my limited knowledge of the property. I have stated numerous times to put it on the market so avoid a fight. His response is through the estate attorney that we should bid of the property. The executor and I had a conversation months after my dad died that he does not want to run up the bidding of this property, and his solution was for both of us to write down our bids on a piece of paper and give it to the estate attorney, and the highest bidder wins.

I did not mention that one other beneficiary and I have hired an attorney, but we have our doubts. He seems to be unresponsive to emails, and to us seems a bit passive with his letters to the estate attorney on our behalf. In March of 2021 we hired him and the first thing we asked of him is to help get us an accounting of all assets. To this day the executor has not provided such, except his version of bullet points list. First, the hard drive crashed, so 30 days turned into 60 days. 60 came and his response was the CPA is reconstructing it and is almost finished. After 100 days we had to set a court date in Probate, and the executors excuse is the CPA is on vacation and was having a hard time getting statements from banks and 2 brokerages. It's been over 150 days since the request for a full accounting of the estate. Then, last night I find out that 2 apartments have been remolded into sale condition, not a rental remodel, but we know that two leases were renewed, which was odd to us.

I'm hoping to find a firm more experienced in getting things done, putting pressure into these types of cases where the executor thinks they can walk all over the beneficiaries. I think most of these problems with estates happen with real estate, as it happened to the generation before us. The result was long, drawn out and ugly

[HuserTT]

I forgot to add this is in Phoenix, Az.

[des8]

As you are USA based and this forum is UK, I doubt you will obtain any valid pointers, but good luck anyway

[Sissyso]

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