People get weird when a family member dies.....seen it many times.
Case in point, my wife’s estranged father (his choice) passes away 3 years before my wife knew about it.
He didn’t have a will and my wife being the only child, by our state law she was rightful air to his estate so we started looking into it and discovered sometime in those 3 years my wife’s aunt (her father’s sister) that used to babysit my wife when she was little took it upon herself to probate the estate in her name.
Her aunt knew full well of my wife’s existence and still......during the time the aunt had possession of the estate a hurricane blew through and dropped an oak tree on the father’s house which was a total loss, the aunt technically but illegally owned the home but failed to procure homeowners insurance.
We finally got the probate put in my wife’s name but right after that the city began to slap Leins on the property because of the condition the house was in.
We retained our own probate attorney and in telling the whole story (I haven’t done it here) they were in disbelief to the point when we got home from that initial consultation they called us back to make sure we were sure our situation was accurate.
It took them between 2 and 3 years to get that mess straightened out and we more than likely never did get all my wife’s father’s possessions back from the aunt.
Like I said, this story only scratches the surface on all the details.
So yeah, people get weird when a family member dies.
My dad and my brothers took care of some of his aunts who never married, from grocery shopping to house care. A day after the last one passed away, there was a cousin who never visited loading their pickup with antiques. Thankfully we caught them, made them put stuff back and had the locks changed. They were told they could buy what they wanted at auction and the proceeds went into the estate for my grandfather (the aunts brother) to deal with.