My dad died 8 months ago & my brother is the trust's executor. The bank said Dad's checking & savings were emptied & closed (200K). What can I do?

This is so obvious that it is probably irrelevant, but the first thing to do is to ask your brother what has happened. For example, when some estates are finalised, all the funds are liquidated and transferred into one account, ready for disbursement. It would be a pity to destroy your relationships and then find out that there isn’t a problem. If you are going to litigate, you need to show evidence that you have asked and record what if any response you got.

kdr1ksr, I agree with everything that igloo572 had written. Much to my surprised my own Dad didn't have everything in his Revocable Trust. Thus, those items outside of the Trust had to go into Probate Court, had to be placed into the Trust after the fact, and in my area took Probate almost two years to close.

In the mean time, since I was appointed to act as the Trustee of my Dad's trust, those items not in the trust were still generating income, thus I had to pay IRS taxes, estimated taxes, yada, yada, yada. I was able to use funds in the Trust to pay almost 2 years worth of income taxes.

Are we totally lost yet? :P

Don't forget the major stick shock of the cost of becoming older. Having 3 shifts of caregivers would have cost my Dad $240,000 per year here in my area. So, one can see how bank accounts can quickly go to zero. Dad moved to senior living which could have cost him $85,000 per year.

Hope you can quickly find out what happened to the funds.

If what you posted is accurate there’s imo 2 different issues:
1. The Assets within the trust, my understanding on Trusts, the issues are that they totally bypass probate; so they are outside the purview of probate court for how they get administered. Trusts are in theory private, so however they were drawn up first to establish how they run & for who as beneficiary (who likely was your dad as primary beneficiary while alive) and who has authority to do so (trustee - probably dad - & then his successor trustee - your bro - once initial dies) all follow the terms set in Trust.
I assume you have copy of all Trust documents? & all done by law firm?

If dad put all assets properly titled to trust as owner, then your bro as successor trustee is in charge of what is done with assets that make up the trust. You need to speak with your brother directly regarding this. Or you contact the law firm that did the trust to schedule a meeting to go over the Trust status as you were to be an after death beneficiary.

As an aside, assets titled as “owned” by Trusts have costs. So like of house was in Trust, Trust has been needing to pay property taxes, insurance, maintenance. If dad was beneficiary, he could have used $ in Trust to pay for his care or his living costs. If the Trust was small & no significant assets - like investments titled as owned by the Trust - within Trust that provided for an income stream to refill (“feed”) the $ in the Trust, there could be nothing-zero-nada left.

If “trust” was using dads SS income to “feed” trust, that $ stopped 8 mo
ago. Just having SS$ as income source, imho, is recipe for disaster...

2. If $ in bank account was separate (not owned by or titled into) from Trust, & if account was POD (pay on death) to someone, then once dad died, POD person can take all $ as their own. It’s POD to them, it’s designed to do this. If bro was POD, it’s his $. POD $ also falls outside of probate, whether it’s $10.00 or $100k. Bank must do paperwork (IRS 8300 form) for $ transferred & deposited that’s over 10k.
Nevertheless all his if he was the POD, but 8300 done if over 10k.

Now IF bank account $ wasn’t POD, & for sure was NOT titled to be owned by trust, then it becomes an Asset of his Estate & goes into however probate can happen for your state. So the terms of his will determine what happens with that $. A good law firm who did the Trust would also have done a will just in case something fell outside of the established trust and usually the Trusts successor trustee is also the named Executor for the will.

Please, please realize, IF dad had a home & in-home caregivers &/or went into a facility for care, & this went on for a while, it easily could have cost six figures over time. Could be no $ left.

If no $ left, your NOT a beneficiary. If this is what happened & you ask for a meeting with law firm who did trust, they will bill you for that meeting & any research charges.

Trusts defund all the time.
Since their private, you don’t really hear about it. But if you ever look at tax sale legal notices, you’ll see parcels that are delinquent for property taxes and have in it’s descriptive as a “trust”. Trust defunded. Trust flat ran out of $ to support whatever it “owned” & so taxes not paid, so goes up for tax sale. If Trust or your dad owned a home or other property or land, you can pretty easily look up the status on the property via Tax Assessor / Land Records website to see if it’s current on taxes or has defaulted or has changed ownership. You should be able to pay a smallish fee to download all items attached to property, so you can precisely see what happened and when & involving whom.

OR brother spent down all Trusts assets & kept all POD $ all for himself. If it’s this scenario, you & other sibling need to hire your own an estate attorney who does litigation. It will not be inexpensive.