Decedent filing - Administrator and/or Surviving Spouse - TurboTax doesn't ask

[BenH]

According to Topic 356 - Decedents  and Publication 559:

If there's an appointed personal representative, he or she must sign the return. If it's a joint return, the surviving spouse must also sign it.

I am helping my mother prepare her joint return for 2019 (the year in which her husband died).

The Administrator of her late husband's estate is her husband's son (her step-son).  It would appear based on the IRS publications that as the Administrator of the Estate, he is required to sign the joint-return.

However, at no point does TurboTax indicate this and it seems perfectly content to allow us to e-file the return with only the authorization of my Mother.  We have obviously let TT know that her husband is deceased, though it asked no questions about the estate or any personal representative.

Her step-son does not want to be involved in the taxes (nor do I believe my mother wants him to), so he plans to hand off the duties of Administration to either me or my my mother.

Is this actually necessary?  I have seen some other conflicting articles (albeit not on IRS site) stating that only my mother as the surviving spouse needs to sign it.  I think this might be incorrect since the estate did/does have an administrator.

I'm worried however that TurboTax is not prompting for this scenario and if we were to file it the way TurboTax is guiding us then we would most likely be in error.

[DavidD66]

According to the IRS:

• When you're a surviving spouse filing a joint return and a personal representative hasn't been appointed, you should sign the return and write "filing as surviving spouse" in the signature area below your signature.
• When you're a surviving spouse filing a joint return and a personal representative has been appointed, you and the personal representative should sign the return.

If I were faced with the situation you described, I would file as the surviving spouse.  If her step-son were to resign, there would be no administrator.  

[BenH]

Based on my understanding, the Estate can't be dissolved until the tax filing is done.

Therefore, the Executor of the state can't resign unless a new one is appointed to file the return.

I'm not really looking for creative solutions around this, I'm asking if the Executor/Administrator of the Estate must sign the joint-return.  It does appear that to be the case and so my second question is why does TurboTax make absolutely no mention of this criteria.  It seems that when you go to file a return in which there is a deceased person on the joint return that TT should be aware enough to ask these questions.  Without them, it risks filing a return in contradiction to IRS rules.