Can an heir challenge or sue an executor (my brother) for lack of fullfilling his fiduciary duties by not distrubuting inherited IRAs? 1 year 3 month

Please accept my condolences on the loss of your parents.   As for your question, yes, you could potentiall sue your brother as executor for failing to carry out his fiduciary duties. Based on your post, I can't actually tell you whether or not he HAS failed to carry out his fiduciary duties, but I certainly can tell you that you are entitled to hire an attorney to represent your interests in the estate and to ask for information. If it appears at that point that your brother is not doing his job correctly, then you and your attorney can petition the probate court to get him to provide an accounting or even possibly to have him removed and a new executor appointed. Hire an attorney who works with contested estates- generally you will want someone who can handle fiduciary litigation if needed, not just probate work.   A couple of side notes on your post: Your brother's attorney is not supposed to communicate with you, in general, so please don't take a lack of communication from your brother's attorney as a bad sign. Your brother's attorney represents him as Executor, not you as an heir or beneficiary, and he is not allowed to give you legal advice. That means in most cases the executor for the attorney will not do a lot of communicating with the beneficiaries. If you want legal advice, you are supposed to hire your own attorney. Also: an executor would not normally be in charge of distributing IRAs if the IRAs have designated beneficiaries. The IRA custodians generally communicate directly with the beneficiaries. The only time an executor would get involved with an IRA is if the estate was the beneficiary (not a good result, but it does happen). If the estate is the beneficiary of an IRA, then there's a lot of income tax consequences that have to be dealt with, and that can actually slow down the administration of the estate. And finally, 1 year and 3 months is not actually an overly long time for an estate administration, especially in the past 2 years.   So- go ahead and find an attorney who works with probate matters and fiduciary litigation. Have the attorney find out more about what's going on and advise you whether there is anything that it appears you should be concerned about, and then, if so, have the attorney advise you as to what steps you should consider taking next. Best wishes to you; I hope your family is able to get the estate settled in the relatively near future and without litigation.