My mother passed away peacefully on September 18. My brother has made my life miserable by threatening and accusing. Any advice?

Many good answers here but if your brother doesn’t stop, tell him you will have to go to court and get an order of protection against him.

Just completely ignore the text. Tell the funeral home to ignore him as well. This is fairly common.

My 101 year old mother went throught this with her two sisters when she was forced to take guardianship of her mother. My grandmother had lived with the younger sister and her husband for 17 years after she retired and sold her business, a neighborhood tavern. They drained her bank accounts. When there was nothing left to take the younger sister uncerimoniously dropped my grandmother off in my mother's driveway and announced "it is your turn to take care of her". My mother took took my grandmother in. She got power of attorney and then my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia, my mother finally went to court and was given guardianship. My mother wisely arranged for my grandmother's funeral too. When she passed, the younger sibling was furious that she was not told anything about the plans. This in spite of the fact that she would not communicate with my mother regarding grandmother's care in any way shape or form during the entire time my mother had charge of grandmother's care. Sadly, from the day of my grandmother's passing until today the younger sister, now 99 years old still does not communicate with my mother. The older sister did wise up after grandmother died and did re-establish a relationship with my mother. You cannot change people. The only thing you are in control of is how you react to them. The funeral director was notified about the younger sibling's anger about the arrangements and handled her anger quite well. He allowed her to come in early before the first day of visitation and let her arrange the floral arrangements around the coffin as well as "check" her hairdo. I suspect he did even more to calm her but I am not privy to it. She showed up each day of visitation but kept her distance from my mother as there was a rather large security guard present at all times during visitation hours. The funeral people should be able to deal with your difficult brother in a professional way. As for you yourself, if you had to make all the arrangements on your own, you owe your brother no explanations. You cannot control how he is treating you but you can control how you react to him. Remain calm. If he wants info give him the facts. Under no circumstances feel that you must defend yourself to him. Do not enage with him on an emotional level. It will drain you. You are grieving and that is enough on your plate right now.

Call the police and have the court issue a restraining order on him.

You need some space!

1. Funeral home needs to deal with this clown on their own, this is not directly your problem to solve. This won't be the first time someone has made their work difficult. So write that off as your burden.
2. Is there a lawyer helping you with the will/trust? If so, tell brother that forthwith all communications are to go through said lawyer, and you're blocking him on your phone. And then block him.

For cripes sakes, you don't need this right now, of all times! And there are things you can do to alleviate. Good luck!

I don't really understand. JoAnn apparently did enough research to know this brother was POA and was caring for Mom. Is there something he would or would not want done at the funeral. Is it something you can accommodate?
As to the will (you mention a will and a trust?) I agree that you should continue with your work on it without his help. I will tell you that I recently settled the estate of my brother as his Trustee, and I did hire a lawyer, whom I needed to use very little, but when I did she was an absolutely godsend. Without her I would not even have an EIN today with the backlogs at IRS. She was wonderful and she only used a few hours, so well worth it. She wrote my letters to any party with an interest in the trust; she made certain all i's dotted and all t's crossed. I came to just love her. I recommend a lawyer if there is any money at all. If the money is now essentially gone, I STILL recommend it, just to close this all out and satisfy the brother.
My sympathies on your loss and I hope you find the great peace that I have found in my own case.

This is the brother who had care of your Mom and was abusing her? Who had POA?

Good or bad, he has held controll all this time. Its going to be hard for him to give it up. Sort of between a rock and a hard place here. POA stops at death, Executor doesn't take over until the Will is probated. I would just ignore him and tell the funeral director the same thing. With COVID, are you going to be able to have a full funeral? Maybe just placate him. Same with funeral director. Just say yes and do what you want.

I would recommend that you start Probate as soon as ur state allows it. Mine I think its 9 to 10 days after the death. This will at least establish that you are Executor. Probate will need the original Will to file it. Then its public record. You will get a copy. You can then give brother a copy if he is a beneficary if not, he is an interested party. At this point brother will just need to wait for an accounting. Debts will need to be paid. As Executor you are entitled to a % of Moms estate. My state its 4% and goes down as the worth of the estate goes up. I don't think you can close Probate till a certain amount of months go by, my state 8. This gives debtors time to put claims in. I had a lawyer in the final steps of Probate. He did the accounting. May want to do this since brother is such a pain. Brother will not get his inheritance until he signs off on the accounting.

So sorry about your Mom. I know the whole situation with her and your brother have been heartbreaking. Now its do what needs to be done. Close out her life, he gets his share and then you can walk away and have nothing more to do with him. And make him aware, your done and he is not to contact you in any way. He is now on his own. And stand by that decision. Never give in because you'll just get sucked back in to his drama.

Your brother is grieving and not handling this well. You too are grieving and trying to handle the loss with grace. Time for a little more matter of fact talks with your brother. He needs to understand that you - not him - are the Executor and will complete your tasks to the best of your ability. Maybe he will be amenable to texting - or better yet emailing - his "suggestions" so as to not confuse the funeral home or others regarding your parent's estate. You can then incorporate or disregard his demands... and others will be spared his tirades.

You might want to point out to your brother that things would have been simpler if he hadn't tried to fraudulently award himself your mother's POA when she was in no state to give it. Now there's a court-appointed trustee because he can't be trusted. He can't expect you to trust him when the courts don't. Stop trying to accommodate him. He's a crook, and he's taught his offspring to be one too. Everything you've described is not grief; it's greed, pure and simple. Hold on to the texts; you probably will need them. Get a restraining order if you have to. And find out from your lawyer if his inheritance (if any) can be deducted from any money he managed to steal from your mother.

sounds like he feels guilty about something so now he wants to squak about everything cause he didn't help with anything before.  I am surprised the funeral home hasn't told him (or you) that IF he continues he will be faced with harassment charges.  And of course they (the funeral home) knows who is actually in charge (you) so they or you need to tell him that he no longer will be tolerated with harassing calls.  Tell him that once things are finalized he will be notified.  You are doing correct in only responding to him to provide information concerning the funeral, etc.  Do NOT respond in any other way to his attempts to get you mad enough to respond (because then he will have something to hold against you).  Too bad he isn't on Judge Judy, she would rip him a new one.  Sorry, just needed to say that.  I wish you the best of luck and hopefully you can soon find the time to grieve.