I don't see any mention of lawsuits resulting in the involvement of JPMorgan, only those filed afterwards. The story [0] makes it sound like Jo acquiesced to hiring an "independent" administrator, which seems to be a case of no good deed going unpunished.
So I stand by the idea that complications from (seemingly voluntarily) hiring a third party executor for $230k puts the situation squarely within "first world problems", meaning caused by out of touch affluence. A family with lesser means would have had to work it out for themselves, under the pointed threat of the entire estate being immediately consumed by legal expenses.
[0] Granted, the whole article is in terms of her side of the story.
Neither Jo nor the children wanted to negotiate. They forced each other to have a third party and they fought until there was nothing left to inherit.
A family with lesser means would ruin themselves with a cheaper executor. It's really common.
I've no idea what probate/intestate law in Texas looks like, but one party (probably the wife) should have had priority to be the executrix. The children could have fought her appointment, insisted on court supervision of her actions, sued the estate to contest disbursals, etc. The wife could have similarly spent money to defend herself, pay herself an outrageous salary, etc. But she would have been much less brazen and the end result would have just been the all-too-common story about one member of a family screwing over the others.