Help - Maybe tax - definately legal - Estate issue

[BulldogTom]

A family member of mine has asked if he can hire me to do the tax return of his brother's estate.   Not a big deal.   Good records, EIN applied for, stocks and property sales done timely.   I can do this.

Then he tells me the rest of the story.   3 months before the brother died, the client's estranged sister died.   She left everything to my client's brother because she had a falling out with my client years before.   But he did not live long enough to complete the duties of the executor of the estate.   So no 1041 was filed for the sister's estate.  There was the sale of a residence for 7 figures that I would guess the state of CA and the IRS will want to match up to a 1099S.   My client knows that his brother got an EIN for the sister's estate.   He also knows that his lawyer prepared a letter for the bank to allow the transfer of funds from the sister's estate to the estate of his brother.  

So here is the question...does my client have an obligation to complete the work that his brother agreed to do as executor of his sister's estate?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.   

Tom
Modesto, CA

[Lee B]

It would probably depend on the legal vehicle that named the deceased brother executor  and whether a successor was also named.