You might deal with normal localities but a place like NYC which can take up to a year to get the court to appoint an executor/administrator in normal times then add being closed for months during covid lockdown and it goes over a year with ease where the family can’t do anything like in this case.  So your saying prep 1099’s from the decedent to the estate for the income, but isn’t that already late filing for calendar 2020? If I did the nominee distribution is the 1099 required or would a statement explaining the split income filed with the tax return suffice? I’m kind of tempted to put the whole 2020 income on the final 1040 and use the estate 1041 for 2021 income assuming there really is no little guy with a green eye shade looking that you may have missed

I had a similar issue with savings bonds they were cashed by the estate and passed the interest income out in the DNI to the beneficiaries so the tax was much lower when divided up by a few beneficiaries on their personal returns then including a much larger income amount on the decedents final return.