Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Georgia

This forum makes it difficult for an attorney to give you accurate answers due to the inability to review documents or obtain other needed information. Due to the number of issues that you have, it would be wise to enlist/retain the assistance of an attorney.

From your post, I assume that your mother died after your grandmother. The way property will pass is that your mother would have inherited her share of your grandmother's property. I don't know what you mean when you say that your mother's assets could be considered as belonging to your grandmother. That is not right if your grandmother died first.

When your mother died, her assets would have passed to you, including anything that was owed to your mother from your grandmother's estate. If the lawyer screwed up on the deed, then you still get your mother's share of your grandmother's property (I don't know if there are any other heirs).

If there is land and debts, you probably will have to open an estate and get the letters of administration. Once you do, you can collect the money from the bank and open up an estate account and deposit the money in the new account. You will have to get the property and probably sell it to pay the bills. If there still is not enough money, then claims are paid in order of priority as per state law. Medical debts incurred within the last 6-12 months of death get paid before credit cards. Since you paid off the car (I don't know why you would do this), you may have a claim against the estate for reimbursement. Or, depending on what the car is worth, you may be able to treat this as a "sale" of the car to you. If the car was worth more than you paid, then sell the car or else you will have to put more cash into the estate.

The bottom line is that you cannot keep your mother's valuables and NOT pay her bills.

However, you are not liable personally for your mother's debts.

Since you have a lot going on, the best thing you can do is go and see a probate attorney in the county where your mother lived at the time of her death.

You did things backwards and that may have been a huge mistake. Before starting a probate you needed to have a lawyer decide IF you should file. If the debts exceed the assets, the answer is no, as creditors are paid before heirs. Get a lawyer now and see if it was a mistake to file, or if it was appropriate, what you need to do to proceed. Paying off the car out of your money also may have been a major mistake.

It sounds like your mother died after your grandmother. That presumably means your mother inherited that property. So I think you may be confused on that account also.

In any event, get a lawyer ASAP to sort things out.