Father Abandoned Us To Return To Syria In 1998, But Is Still On Deed To House To Which He Never Contributed And Remains Legally Married To My Mom In Va, Despite Remarrying (a 14-year Old Fwiw). My Mom Needs To Sell House For Retirement And To Divorce So He Doesn't Inherit! Thank You!

How can we remove the father who abandoned us from the deed to our family home and effect a divorce between him and my mother? So far our options considered are 1) waiting and hoping he dies first and 2) swallowing the bitter pill of paying him $20,000 for his share of the house, which he did nothing to acquire. My brother and mother have been working with a family lawyer and brother is exploring other lawyers through his military service, but so far they have been slow and don’t have experience with this, so we want to see what else we can do and find out if a family lawyer is actually the appropriate category of lawyer for this problem.

Additional details:

• In 1998 father abandoned mother, brother (born 1996), and me (born 1994), returned to birth country Syria where he remarried and started a new family
• However, he and my mother never actually legally divorced in Virginia
• My father remains on the deed of the house, even though he neither contributed to its purchase (bought by maternal grandfather, paid back over time by my mother) nor ownership expenses since he left
• Father never provided support of any kind after leaving, and we lived around the poverty line the entire time (to be fair, he was surely even poorer)
• My mother is 65 and needs ability to sell the house to fund and/or move for retirement in the next few years, ideally without having to give any of the proceeds to my father
• Father sees opportunity for undeserved windfall, and is demanding $20,000 to be bought out to be paid in person by my brother at a US Embassy in a nearby 3rd country (although my brother is in the US military and knows he will not be able to get leave for this)
• My mother received a modest inheritance from her mother this winter, so she could make that payment, though it would be a bitter pill to swallow and still very material to her
• Father also attempting to extort an unspecified additional amount to actually divorce
• Syria is not signatory to the Hague Convention and the US does not have a diplomatic presence, so our understanding is that we cannot serve him with divorce papers, and also that the outcome of a divorce is unpredictable, despite our father’s total abandonment and lack of any support or contributions. Is this correct?
• What can we do to get him off the deed while giving him as little as possible and to get a divorce, especially if he will not cooperate with the latter in particular?