Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Illinois

My mother passed away due to a Vioxx injury. I had taken care of her all of my life, as I lived next door to her. I even took off of work several days to take care of her while she was sick. None of my siblings helped me. Back in 1978, my mother named me as the executor on her will and it says none of my siblings are to receive anything. However, that will was never filed. I found it in my mothers home.

So, when she died, I had to pay for my mothers funeral on my own, because the siblings refused to help pay to bury their own mother. They didn't want anything to do with her. After hear death, I also inheritied the responsibility to look after my mentally retarded sister who lived with my mother. For quite awhile, I struggled to pay my bills and sometimes did not have any food to eat. It got so bad that I had to order meat and cheese from Figi's, because they would send upfront with no costs and bill me later. And then recently my sister died. Again, none of the siblings would help pay for the funeral, so I had to borrow money from a good friend to bury my sister.

So as for the Vioxx Settlement, our settlement is $44,000. The lawyer is taking his 32% (which Judge Fallon capped) of the money awarded to me, plus he's taking nearly $5,000 and says it's for "secretarial overtime, travel costs, phone calls, faxes, postage, etc". He won't send a detailed expense report with receipts to show exact costs and when the fees were incurred, so I think that he's over exaggerating on the fees.

Now he's trying to get all of my siblings to sign him as the Executor, so he can divide up my settlement among all of the siblings! I have been working with this lawyers firm for 5 years now, and the whole time I thought that he had my siblings sign papers to waive their rights to the settlement money. Until my daughter read the lawyer's words, and realized that he was trying to divide up the money. I called him and he was rude to me about it. He said "It sounds like you don't want them to have any of the money."

What do I do? They have no right to that money. They didn't help pay for funeral expenses. They didn't help me take care of my mother or my sister. I don't think this lawyer is on my side. I am afraid he is going to go behind my back and find a way to send money to the siblings. Please help. Isn't there a way to avoid all of this trouble with the siblings? Such as putting a newspaper ad in saying we are looking for the siblings, if you don't respond, then you waive your right to the money.

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