Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in New York

I don't know about PR (I assume house is in PR but you also clicked on NY for jurisd and mentioned "the city" which we usually see as Manhattan and/or NYC). Regardless, however, you need to let any attorney who knows PR r/e law how the house is titled (e.g. tenants-in-common). One option there is to request a partition, which entitles your Dad to sell his portion; good luck finding a buyer these days but there are r/e investors, perhaps, and it might "encourage" her since she would then only own a portion and the buyer could seek to "encourage" her, perhaps by requesting compensation for her residing in his/her space (rent) (assuming she lives there, at least keeps a residence there for vacations). If the house is held in joint tenancy, then it is another ballgame. I assume she does not want to buy him out. While the city could foreclose, I know that would take a long time, even more than other jurisdictions, as expected in this economy especially, and now that the state courts had budget cuts, the bar associations have been warned of further delays in NYS courts. I do foreclosure defense in Suffolk and it takes a loong time (good for my clients). On the other hand, a foreclosure sale would result in a much lower value for the house than in a regular sale, in my experience. So, again, this news might "encourage" her to allow a reasonable offer, especially since who knows when more offers would come in. Moreover, even if the offer came in at her price, if the bank does not approve that amount when they appraise it, the loan probably won't go through for a number of reasons. Often, buyers then have to have the sellers come down to the appraised value anyway, especially if they cannot make up the difference (occasionally,buyers want a property so bad they will pay the difference out-of-pocket but this is not common-I know I would not).