My mom's friend lived with her for year then passed away. He collected a house full of "stuff" including packing the garage and attic. His family removed his "valuables" a couple of months ago. I have tried calling to see if they will remove the rest but no reply. I do not have their address. I live out of town and cant clean the mess. Not sure what to do legally.
Check the law where the house is, most states have a 30 day rule, after 30 days it is considered abandoned property and now belongs to the property owner, to do with as they see fit.
JoAnn has a lot of good ideas below about documenting and trying to send a bill to the deceased’s estate. I’d definitely try that.
My two cents is that if you are now being ghosted, you’ll never hear from them again. They know all that’s left is junk and they don’t want it.
Nephews*, leach of a GF, left her junk at my Moms saying it would only be a month. Its a long story, but it took me a year to contact her, she had moved out of state. I typed up a letter saying that I thought a year was long enough to pick up her stuff and she had 30 days. If not gone by then it would be trashed. I sent the document to my nephew via email, he downloaded it to his phone and texted it to her. (this way she did not get my addy) She never picked it up so it was trashed. Found out a while later Nephew was paying for her storage unit. Yes, another letter telling her there would be no more payments made. She had 2 weeks to call owner and set up payment. He called me and told me she never called so he had to trash the unit. Asked if Patrick had anything in it, no. If owner had checked her credit he would have never rented to her.
*Nephew has challeges and at the time was very young. Maturity is one of his problems. This woman took advantage of his good nature.
Then, again and being of a careful nature I would stop by my local police station or sheriff office and ask the rules on this as to whether state law or city ordinance requires you to post notice, and where, when, and for how long.
My only fear is that someone will just want to "mess with you", claiming they weren't notified and that there was all this valuable stuff and just in general give you trouble. I think you are wise to try to avoid that trouble. Sure do wish you good luck. Just give a call or stop by local sheriff. The call 1-800-JUNK type haulers to get it gone.
Give them like a month to come remove the rest. Or get their permission to dump it.