Aunt Has A Realtor Paying Her Legal Bills To Get Control Of Estate

Location: Utah

My main question: Is this situation shady and what are my options?

My grandpa passed away over a year ago. At the time my aunt was living with him. My aunt has a lot of problems. She’s been to prison and has had very serious issues with drug addiction and alcoholism. We knew the house had a reverse mortgage from forever ago and figured that would eat the value of the house. My mom was so shattered by my grandpa’s death that she didn’t really want to deal with any estate stuff, and since it sounded like there would be nothing, we didn’t really question her ignoring it.

About a week ago my mom got a call from from an attorney asking her to “waive notice” and let my aunt, who was still living in the house, be the representative of the estate in informal probate court. the message was really weird, and said that an unnamed 3rd party was paying the legal bills.

I contacted the attorney and found out that a “family friend” who is a real estate agent was the one paying the legal bills for my aunt because they wanted to buy and flip the house. This lawyer also told me:

- that this realtor person had been loaning money to my aunt. This seems weird as hell.

- that there was very little equity in the house, though the claim to have no documentation of the mortgage And the house itself has gone up substantially in value.

-if we contested it, the real estate agent would likely walk away

There’s no will that anyone knows of, but the house is technically owned by a trust. The mortgage company won’t give me any info unless I’m the estate rep, so no luck there. My mom’s health is such that she can’t really deal with this, but I have power of attorney, so I could be her proxy if we challenged it, but I just have no idea what to make of the situation.