The death of director Rob Reiner and his wife, producer and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, has produced one of the more legally interesting estate questions to reach the headlines in years. The couple were stabbed to death in their Brentwood home in December. Their son, Nick Reiner, was arrested within hours and has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder.
This month, Nick’s civil attorneys filed a petition in Los Angeles County asking a court to release funds from a trust his parents established for him in 1993. The stated purpose is to pay for his criminal defense. According to the petition, the trust directs that he receive half of its assets at age 30 and the remainder at 35, that he never received the half due at 30, and that the trustee has offered shifting justifications for withholding the money — including concerns about his competence. There is reported to be at least $1.5 million in the trust, and his attorneys describe the distributions as “mandatory and unconditional.”
The case sits at the intersection of two distinct bodies of law: the slayer doctrine, which governs whether a person who kills another may inherit from the victim, and trust administration law, which governs what a beneficiary is entitled to receive and to know. Because the Reiner matter is being litigated in California, California law controls. But the same fact pattern would resolve differently — in some respects meaningfully so — under Connecticut and Massachusetts law. What follows is an examination of all three frameworks, along with the trust-disclosure question that the petition raises but cannot, on the public record, answer.
The slayer doctrine, and why a conviction is not required
The slayer doctrine rests on a principle old enough to predate most modern probate codes: a wrongdoer should not profit from his own wrong. In practical terms, a person who feloniously and intentionally kills another is barred from inheriting from the victim, whether through a will, a trust, intestacy, or a beneficiary designation. The killer is generally treated as though he predeceased the victim, so the property passes to whoever would take next.
The most consequential feature of the doctrine — and the one most relevant to a defendant who has been charged but not tried — is that a criminal conviction is not a prerequisite. All three states allow a civil court to decide the slayer question independently, on the civil standard of proof, which is far lower than the criminal standard.
In California, this is set out directly in Probate Code section 254. A final judgment of conviction for felonious and intentional killing is conclusive. But in the absence of a conviction, the probate court may determine by a preponderance of the evidence whether the killing was felonious and intentional, with the burden resting on the party seeking to establish it. Preponderance means more likely than not — a far easier showing than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The reason for this civil pathway is structural: criminal cases sometimes end in acquittals on procedural grounds, plea bargains to lesser offenses, or no prosecution at all, and the slayer rule would be largely toothless if a conviction were the only way to invoke it.
This is why the timing argument in Nick Reiner’s petition — that he is presumed innocent and therefore entitled to his money now — is weaker than it first appears. The presumption of innocence governs the criminal proceeding. It does not prevent the probate court, or the other beneficiaries, from litigating the slayer question on a separate civil track. And while that question is pending, courts routinely freeze the disputed assets to preserve them, precisely because a distribution made now cannot be undone if the recipient is later determined to be a slayer.
California: a single, comprehensive statute
California’s slayer rule lives in Probate Code sections 250 through 259. Section 250 is sweeping. A person who feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent is not entitled to any property under the victim’s will, or under a trust created by or for the benefit of the decedent, including any power of appointment the instrument confers on the killer and any nomination of the killer to serve as executor, trustee, guardian, conservator, or custodian. Related provisions extend the same logic to joint tenancies, which are severed so that the victim’s share passes through the estate rather than to the surviving killer, and to life insurance and other contractual arrangements, which become payable as though the killer had predeceased the insured.
The statutory standard is “feloniously and intentionally.” Two carve-outs follow from that language. The first is justification: a killing in lawful self-defense is not felonious, and does not trigger the bar. The second, and the one that matters here, is intent. A killing that is not intentional in the legal sense — because the defendant lacked the requisite mental state, or is found legally insane — may fall outside the statute entirely.
That intent requirement is the single most important variable in the Reiner case. Reporting indicates that Nick Reiner’s schizophrenia medication had been adjusted at some point before the killings. If his criminal case results in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, or in a conviction for a form of homicide that is not deemed intentional, the slayer statute may not bar him at all. In that scenario, the trust analysis collapses back into an ordinary dispute about the trust’s terms. If, on the other hand, a court finds — either through a criminal conviction or through an independent civil finding by a preponderance of the evidence — that the killing was felonious and intentional, section 250 closes the door, and the vested or unvested status of his distributions becomes largely beside the point.
The historical reference point most observers will recall is the Menendez case. Once the brothers were convicted of murdering their parents, the slayer rule barred them from inheriting any portion of the multimillion-dollar estate. That is the straightforward application. The Reiner case is more complicated only because of the open question of intent and mental state.
Connecticut: statute plus equity
Transplant the same facts to Connecticut and the destination is similar, but the legal route is different, and the difference is worth understanding.
Connecticut does not have a single, comprehensive slayer statute that sweeps across wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations the way California’s does. Its principal statutory provision, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 45a-447, bars a person who feloniously and intentionally causes the death of another from inheriting from the victim, from taking under the victim’s will, and from acquiring property as a surviving joint tenant. Like California, Connecticut does not require a criminal conviction; the statute permits the probate or civil court to make the determination, and a conviction is conclusive where one exists.
Where Connecticut differs is in the gaps. The statute does not address every conceivable vehicle by which a killer might receive a benefit, and trusts in particular are not as comprehensively covered as they are under the California or Massachusetts codes. Connecticut courts fill those gaps with equity. The governing principle — that no one may profit from his own wrong — is applied through the constructive trust, an equitable remedy in which the court treats the wrongdoer as holding the property for the benefit of those who should rightfully receive it, and orders it conveyed accordingly. The practical result is that a Connecticut court can reach assets that the slayer statute does not literally capture, including, in an appropriate case, distributions from a trust.
So a Connecticut court would likely arrive at the same outcome as a California court — a beneficiary determined to be a slayer does not keep the money — but it would do so through a combination of the statute and equitable doctrine rather than through one all-encompassing provision. For a trustee administering such a trust in Connecticut, the path is clear: there is ample basis to withhold distribution and seek judicial guidance while the slayer question is resolved.
Massachusetts: the cleanest statutory framework
Massachusetts offers the most comprehensive single statute of the three. Its slayer provision, M.G.L. c. 190B § 2-803, is part of the Massachusetts Uniform Probate Code, and it addresses the full range of transfer mechanisms in one place: intestate succession, the elective share, wills, trusts, powers of appointment, nominations to fiduciary office, joint assets, life insurance, and other beneficiary designations.
Under § 2-803, an individual who feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent forfeits all benefits with respect to the decedent’s estate. The statute revokes any revocable disposition or appointment of property the decedent made to the killer in a governing instrument, revokes any provision conferring a power of appointment on the killer, and revokes any nomination of the killer to serve as personal representative, executor, trustee, guardian, conservator, agent, or attorney-in-fact. The killer is treated as having disclaimed or predeceased, and the property passes accordingly.
Massachusetts also makes the civil-versus-criminal point explicit in the statute itself. A conviction of felonious and intentional killing is conclusive, but in the absence of a conviction, the court may determine by a preponderance of the evidence whether the killing was felonious and intentional — and the statute frames the underlying rule, that a wrongdoer may not profit from his own wrong, as a civil concept independent of the criminal law.
There is one analytical wrinkle in Massachusetts worth isolating, because it intersects directly with the “mandatory and unconditional” argument in the Reiner petition. The statute speaks in terms of revoking revocable dispositions — those the decedent retained the power to cancel. A distribution that had already vested years earlier, and that the settlors could no longer revoke, is harder to reach under the statute’s literal language. This is precisely the gap that the common-law constructive trust exists to fill. Massachusetts, like Connecticut, retains the equitable power to impose a constructive trust over assets a slayer is technically entitled to receive, forcing them to the alternate takers. The upshot is that a vested, mandatory distribution does not immunize a slayer; it merely shifts the battleground from statutory forfeiture to equitable remedy. The vesting argument is the beneficiary’s strongest card. It is not, by itself, a winning one.
How the three jurisdictions compare
Across all three states, the core answer to the central question is the same: a beneficiary determined to have feloniously and intentionally killed the people who funded his trust will not be permitted to keep the money, and the determination can be made civilly, by a preponderance of the evidence, without waiting for the outcome of the criminal case. A trustee in any of the three states would have a sound basis to withhold distribution and seek the court’s direction while the slayer question is litigated.
The differences are matters of mechanism rather than result. California reaches trusts directly through a comprehensive statute. Massachusetts does the same through its Uniform Probate Code provision, with the one caveat that already-vested, irrevocable distributions may require an equitable assist. Connecticut relies more heavily on the interplay of a narrower statute and the constructive-trust remedy. In every case, the decisive issue is not the label on the distribution but the finding on intent — whether a court concludes the killing was felonious and intentional, or instead finds insanity or some non-intentional form of homicide that places the defendant outside the slayer rule altogether.
The trust-disclosure question, and the limits of what can be known
The petition’s separate claim — that Nick Reiner was not given a copy of the trust and did not receive the funds he was owed at 30 — deserves careful treatment, because it is the part of the story most vulnerable to misreading.
As a general matter, a beneficiary named in a trust has a right to see it, and to receive an accounting. This is well established across all three jurisdictions. In California, once a trust becomes irrevocable on the settlor’s death, the trustee has a duty under Probate Code section 16060 to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed, must provide the trust’s terms on request under section 16061.7, and must serve a formal notification alerting beneficiaries to that right. Connecticut imposes parallel duties under its Uniform Trust Code: section 45a-499kkk requires a trustee to keep qualified beneficiaries reasonably informed, to furnish a copy of the relevant portions of the trust instrument on request, and, within sixty days of a revocable trust becoming irrevocable at the settlor’s death, to notify the qualified beneficiaries of their right to request a copy. Massachusetts imposes comparable duties to inform and to provide trust terms under its version of the same uniform framework. So a beneficiary’s request for a copy of the trust and an accounting is, in itself, ordinary and well grounded.
But the existence of that right does not establish that the trustee has done anything improper. “I did not receive my distribution at 30” is not evidence of misconduct, and here is the reason that distinction matters: no one outside the proceeding has seen the trust instrument. Unless and until it is filed in open court, its terms may never become public. And the terms are where the entire question is decided.
A trust can be drafted to do many things beyond paying out on a birthday. It can grant the trustee discretion to withhold or delay distributions under defined circumstances. It can include a spendthrift provision. It can condition distributions on something other than the beneficiary reaching a particular age. And — most significantly given what has been reported — it can authorize the trustee to withhold distributions if the trustee determines that the beneficiary is incapacitated or not of sound mind.
That last possibility is the one the public record gestures toward without confirming. The trustee has reportedly raised concerns about Nick Reiner’s competence. If the trust contains language empowering the trustee to withhold distributions when the beneficiary is mentally unsound, those competence concerns may be not an excuse but the operative reason — and the explanation for why the age-30 distribution was never made. In that scenario, the trustee would not be obstructing a clear entitlement; he would be administering the trust according to its own terms. Whether such a clause exists is unknown. It cannot be assumed, but neither can it be ruled out, and that uncertainty is the central point.
There are, in short, several entirely lawful explanations for a withheld distribution: a condition other than age; trustee discretion; a spendthrift or incapacity clause; or simple caution on the part of a fiduciary confronting the possibility that the person who funded the trust was killed by the person now demanding payment from it. Without the instrument, an outside observer cannot distinguish a trustee who is stonewalling from a trustee who is faithfully following the document. Any responsible analysis has to stop at that line.
Bottom line
Two questions will decide whether Nick Reiner ever receives the money in his trust, and neither can be answered on the current record.
The first is what the trust actually says — in particular, whether it conditions or qualifies the distributions his attorneys describe as mandatory, and whether it authorizes the trustee to withhold funds on grounds such as the beneficiary’s mental soundness. That document is not public, and may never be.
The second, and ultimately the more consequential, is whether a court determines that he feloniously and intentionally killed his parents. If it does — whether through a criminal conviction or an independent civil finding by a preponderance of the evidence — then under the law of California, Connecticut, or Massachusetts alike, the slayer doctrine bars him from the trust, and the constructive-trust remedy stands ready to capture anything the governing statute does not reach directly. If instead he is found legally insane, or the killing is determined to be something other than intentional, the slayer doctrine recedes, and the matter returns to an ordinary contest over the meaning of the trust’s terms.
What can be said with confidence is narrow but real: he is very likely entitled to see the trust and to an accounting, and he is very unlikely to receive any distribution while the slayer question remains open.
Leave a Reply