I’ve also known a case where daughter is no longer speaking to father (or brother) because of the disposition of quite minor items from the mother’s jewellery etc.
A friend of mine handled an estate (as accountant) where the couple married late in life. When she died, the husband had to call the police to stop her children from cleaning out the house becaue “this was our mother’s stuff so it belongs to us now.” They were told to bring it all back or be charged with break, enter and theft.
Checks the neighbors disposed items more? 
I was appointed executor of my mother’s estate with the approval of my older brother. He trusted that I would be fair, having known me for all of my life. There were no other heirs.
So I cashed out autos, houses, furniture and so on. The profits from their sale were divided evenly (except that he got 1 cent more in the division! He owes me!)
Personal items and things that either of us showed an interest in were set aside. If one of us knew that the other was especially interested in a particular item, the other agreed that it was theirs. Then we took turns selecting items from the remaining that had some meaning to us.
After this, wives, cousins and in-laws were invited to take what they wanted. Everything else was donated to charity, except for the 160 cubic yard of trash that was removed and put in big commercial garbage containers.
All of this was possible only because of trust between my brother and myself. And we didn’t value the “stuff” more than getting along as usual.
I just dodged a bullet. After the local memorial service, and after the later family service, one of Mom’s friends brought by a big, honking steamer trunk, saying that Mom had asked her to sell it on Craigslist for $150, but there hadn’t been any takers. That was just enough to leave everyone feeling that we should take a shot at selling it separately.
Last Sunday I discovered that a family friend, who was about to fly to St. Vincent to go to med school, was stressing over how to pack all of the stuff he needed to take. Ta-da! We quickly agreed to donate the trunk to the cause, if he was interested. And he was. I can put things in the back of my van, now. That thing’s been there for weeks. We have achieved closure.
I just inherited my grandmother’s wedding band and engagement ring.*
They’re just barely valuable enough to be “a nice bit o’ money” for me right now if I sold them. Not a ton, I don’t think, but maybe $600-$800. More than half my rent, and a week’s pay…
But I can’t quite do it. I’ve got my own ring, but…what if my son or daughter wants it someday to propose to someone with? Crap. I have The Family Heirloom Wedding Set now. That feels like a lot of responsibility to the future generations.
*Which are not a matched set, exactly. It’s clear from looking at them that one was chosen because it almost matched the other. There’s got to be a story there, but darned if I know it. Did she lose a ring? Did he replace a plain band which was part of the original set with these bitty diamond chips at some anniversary? Did Grandma get a Push Present? I have no idea.
An FYI for folks dealing with estates: the price of silver is high right now. If your dearly departed has stashes of coins, check to see if they were pulling silver coins out of their spare change back in the sixties. A jar full of dimes, for instance, could be worth a thousand or more. (Anything 1964 and older is 90% silver - for half dollars, I think 1965 to 1969 was 40%.)
Yes, I did get replacement medals, but they are not the originals. And you can tell they are not from the same era, the replacements are the moderns, not that that is a big sticking point for me. But as for the records, the standard response from the archives is that they ‘had a big fire, and are missing.’ So many records only exist in the form that the service members saved. So if there’s a bottleneck, and one person won’t release them, that is that. Same for many photos.
The executor/executrix has a duty to act in good faith and be reasonable. He or she can’t just decide to torch the house because he or she can. I think that a court would intervene in the situation you describe.
Sentimental value is always a problem in law. You can’t put a money price tag on a love letter written by your grandfather to your grandmother. It’s worthless on the open market, but may mean the world to a family member.
I believe that if a judge got involved he would use his equitable powers to divide the mementos as justice would be best served without assigning a monetary value to them.
Also, most wills have a “rest, residue, and remainder” clause that leaves anything not mentioned to a named person. Sometimes that means bank accounts; sometimes it means loads of shit that you have to haul to the dump.
In 1973 a fire at the National Personnel Records Centerdestroyed something like 17 million service records. Anyone who won’t share the service records they have for a family member is being a first-order jerk, because there’s no way to reconstruct them.
Torching the house is one thing. It’s hard to imagine a house even today with no value. Also a sale may be the only way to fairly divide the biggest part of the estate. If Johnny wants to keep it then he can buy it from the estate at fair market value.
However a shoebox full of Johnny’s baby pictures and mementos? If Dick is the executor and a dick he can claim they have zero value and burn them if Johnny can’t find a judge and get an injunction in time…
Sure, if Johnny can’t find a judge and get an injunction, Dick can do pretty much anything with the estate. When Johnny finally does get a judge, he won’t look too favorably on Dick’s actions and may very well appoint an administrator in place of Dick, as well as financially penalize him in some way for torching the mementos unless Dick has a damn good reason for doing so in the face of Johnny’s requests for them.