My Mom's Bank Lost The Beneficiary Paperwork We Did In Early July & Says We Have No Recourse Other Than Go Through The Normal Estate Process

Location: Pennsylvania, USA

I'm completely new here, grieving, & afraid I may inadvertently violate the rules so please bear with me.

We buried our mom today, now I'm turning my focus to what is a major, potentially life savings costing, problem. My mom's cancer returned within the last year; her diagnosis was terminal & she chose too live out the rest of her days instead of attempting treatment again. God rest her soul.

I have multiple siblings, more than 1 have been severely permanently disabled since birth & will continue to live with me the rest of our lives. Another sibling is in a rough spot in life & lives with us aswell.

Our mom made me sole beneficiary for these reasons & entrusted me to make sure the sum amount passed from her to me would be split appropriately. A significant portion of her now estate was in actuality my disabled siblings life savings, simply in her name for what I hope are obvious reasons. Her wishes were that I put the savings aside specifically for the siblings it belongs to then split the rest evenly amongst all of us. All siblings were in agreement with her wishes.

Our mom herself has been severely permanently disabled for decades (familial genetic disorders that get worse each generation suck.) Our goal was to, upon her death, be able to preserve their savings whilst allowing them to continue receiving Social Security. For most people their savings are not alot, but its a hell of alot better than nothing & would atleast somewhat protect them if I was to unexpectedly pass myself.

Due to her disability then illness our mom was unable to set up anything more sophisticated; I'm still young myself & knew we should have but ultimately, with the money being solely in her name since my dad's sudden passing relatively recently aswell, I had no legal right to make any decisions regarding her finances & she refused/was unable to do so herself despite my pleas. Foolish I know & agree, but I can't change the past & I'm desperate to atleast protect their savings; I couldn't care less about whatever my personal share of our potential inheritance would be (again, really not a life changing amount for most people in the grand scheme of things.)

So to be as clear as possible, my mom made me sole beneficiary in hopes of avoiding the normal estate process & therefore protecting my disabled siblings life savings from being taken by and or completely losing the Social Security they rely on. Her bank now says they not only cannot find the forms we signed designating me as such, but they have no record of us even visiting their branch on that day whatsoever, whilst having record of other forms & day we visited. According to them, even if I can produce our copies of the beneficiary forms, it wouldn't make a difference & we have no other option than to let the standard estate process play out. They have no interest in helping us otherwise & will not even entertain the idea that their employee who I identified maybe made any errors doing her job. She conveniently is on some sort of personal leave for an unspecified amount of time for the forseeable future so she cannot answer for herself anytime soon, not that they would even approach the subject with her if she wasn't. Their words. We trusted them & her; once again, foolish I know, but here we are.

Do I have any legal recourse? If so, what type of lawyer should I seek out to help us? I haven't finished looking but at the moment I don't know where our copies of the paperwork are but I'm certain I have it somewhere. Again, according to the bank, they will not honor anything regardless of what I present them with due to allegedly them having no internal records of it or even our visit to complete said paperwork. Thank you in advance & God Bless

Edit: Forgot to mention a major motivating fear for our family here; due to her disability & illness then hospice since the terminal returning cancer diagnosis aswell as multiple hospital stays in the last decade totalling atleast 12 weeks cumulatively, she may owe a significant amount of medical debt. Im not aware of exacrly how much at the moment, but it very well could be more than what her total estate is. What I do know is altogether with other kinds of debt the total is already ~$9k but that is more than likely just the tip of the iceberg. She had medical insurance through Social Security but that only goes so far here in America.