Don't open an estate account. Estates generally pay higher taxes than individuals.
In general, this income would be reported by the heirs as "income in respect of a decedent." See publication 559. Because the entire amount would have been taxable to your father, the entire amount is taxable to the heirs.
https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-publication-559
There should be no need to open an estate account, unless MetLife will only pay to the estate and not you, or the estate has other income and business affairs. Assuming you receive a check for the full $53K, you can deposit it, and send checks to the 3 siblings for their share, and each sibling reports income in respect of a decedent on their own return.
If you did open an estate, you would still pass the money on to the 4 heirs, the 4 heirs would report and pay the tax (not the estate) and the estate would show what was happening by filing an estate tax return and issuing K-1 statements to each heir showing the pass-through. But that's overkill in this case, and would cost $200+ for the turbotax software needed to file the estate return.
