My father passed away unexpectedly a few weeks ago. My relationship with him was quite rocky and I’d had a few months of no contact with him before he passed. My younger brother and I are his only next of kin. He has siblings that have been informed but he had very minimal contact with his family. He was completely broke when he passed, with no cash, nothing in his bank accounts, and nothing really of any value except for some woodworking equipment and a 2014 Honda Pilot car. My brother works on cars and was able to assess that it had no oil in it either due to a leak or that my dad hadn’t known/couldn’t afford to fill it up. The power steering fluid was also almost completely drained. Due to it seemingly being driven with zero oil, my brother thinks the car is unsafe to drive, and we don’t want to sell it to someone who would drive it anyway.
We are thinking about scrapping the car, but we don’t know if we’d need the title for that. Kind of just looking for suggestions because we don’t know what to do. We have not opened an estate because he truly had nothing, and while my brother and I are his next of kin, we don’t see the point of opening an estate in our situation. We didn’t find a title for the car while going through his apartment. Neither of us want the car.
If anyone has been in a similar situation, where someone has died that you’re technically responsible for, please share what that was like. People keep asking if there will be a memorial, but I would be the one to plan it if that were to happen, and he didn’t have anyone close enough to him to attend. It’s devastatingly sad but It’s just not a normal death of a family member situation. He would have wanted the simplest and easiest thing anyway. He’s been cremated and we will scatter his ashes on the atlantic coast. He always wanted to retire by the ocean. Thanks for any advice you can offer.