Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in North Carolina

The landlord is correct in a sense. You need to be formally appointed as the personal representative for the estate.

Your "rights" are not at issue here. Your mother is deceased. The landlord can be held liable if he just lets anyone poke around inside your mother's propert. You do not indicate if your half-brother was a child of your mother or father. I am assuming he was also a child of your mother. In such case, assuming there is no will and that your mother was not married at the time of her death, then he is entitled to one-half of your mother's property.

There is a procedure at the court where, if you cannot afford the filing fees, you can ask for a waiver of those fees. The court has the forms. See if you can petition as an indigent to file the estate.

While you are indigent your mother's estate has to reimburse you for the fees. You do not indicate what your mother owned. You indicate she had no land and was buying her car. If the car is worth less that what is owed, you can call the finance company to come and get it. But you do not indicate if she had money in the bank, even a little. If your mother had less than $10,000 in assets, then perhaps you can use the simplified estate procedure and get an affidavit to collect her assets. That should be acceptable to the landlord.

So go and talk to the probate court clerk and see if you can (a) use the affidavit for collection without having to go through probate and/or (b) see if you can file an indigency petition to ask for waiver of the fees so that you can collect your mother's property and remove it from the rental unit.