Kress, TX Estate Planning Law Firms & Lawyers

Easiest and cheapest way is to sign an Assignment of your interest in your mother's estate to your brother. Presumably, his lawyer will be happy to draft that, and it won't cost you or him anything.

It means two things.  First, you agree that you do not need to know the date of the hearing and be present.  Second, it means that you agree that your stepmother should be able to administer your father's estate free of court supervision.  This means that she does need to submit an inventory but does not need the court's permission to sell, for example, your father's car and does not need to provide an accounting to the court.  A beneficiary may nonetheless request an accountign 15 months after the executor is appointed. Are you sure that a Will is being probated?  Ordinarily, beneficiaries are notified after, not before, a Will is admitted to probate.  In an intestacy, heirs are asked to sign a distributee's waiver of notice and consent to application for independent administration before the hearing.  

Perhaps you could file an action in court and ask a court to order the remains to be turned over to you. Not sure of the legal theory. The fact that you paid the funeral bill doesn't give you a right to the remains. Your grandmother (her mother) is a "next of kin", just like you (as a child) - at least under the laws of intestacy in Michigan. So she may have a right to the remains - on an equal footing to yours. Perhaps a judge will be willing to play Solomon and divide the ashes amongst the next of kin.