Step mother making everything difficult

Im in PA, but the family/estate is in WA.

So my partner’s father died very suddenly and left no will. There are life insurance policies, a 401k, and a house to be sold.

His new wife of 6 years was declared executor of the estate and is crashing out hard. His family was paying her bills but she’s been cutting them all off left and right and clearly falling into paranoid mentalities of everyone being out to get her. Talking about being abandoned and ppl stealing money from her, then making up easily verifiable stories about how she was being harassed, or lied to or ppl were threatening her, ect ect. Deeply unwell behavior, and honestly scary.

There are no lines of communication left, all we have is 1 social media account where she’s still acting like we’re somehow still actively hounding her, and bragging about making sure we don’t win, or break her. She’s been making constant threats of making sure the rest of the family sees nothing from it, and has said she needs 9 months to access the 401k and get the house listed. We can’t verify if she’s even began an inventory… We believe she’s trying to make sure the 401k is empty, and trying to hide money or sell shit quick so she doesn’t have to give the family anything out of pettiness

Its actually deranged. She won’t even let us take pictures for sentimental value from the house.

I started emailing lawyers today - despite not having the money for it - but its outside business hours, so I wanted some input from other ppl. Has anyone had anyone else go nuts on them like this? How did it turn out? Can she actually do any damage?? Any assurance that everything will be ok?!

Physically checking in on her is out of the question since she’s across the country, we dont have the money or PTO to fly over, and frankly we’re scared of her killing or beating the shit out of anyone who shows up out her house with how paranoid she’s been acting