Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Connecticut

I assume your brother held your father's power of attorney and was taking care of his finances. If your father was in a nursing home, that costs $8,000 to $12,000 per month. You can burn through a lot of cash at that rate, so maybe the money is all gone. If your father had applied for Title XIX benefits to pay for the nursing home, he would have had to have exhausted his assets. Check with the probate court for the district where your father lived (probably where the nursing home was) to see if an estate was ever opened. If there was an estate opened, and if your brother was appointed executor, then, and only then, does your brother have any obligation to you as executor. If no estate was opened then he owes you nothing. If you want to know how he spent the money under the power of attorney, you can ask the probate court to let you examine his records. Technically, the probate court does not have jurisdiction or control over someone holding a power of attorney the way it has control over an executor, but it can order a look at the books. You may well discover that the nursing home ate up all the money, and the only reason you got the proceeds of the coins was because your brother didn't disclose them to the Title XIX people when he made the application for benefits. If there was money left over, then your brother should have opened an estate, but if the money was all used up, then he didn't have to do anything.