How the ‘slayer rule’ may play a task figuring out who’ll inherit the Reiners’ wealth | EUROtoday

The deadly stabbings of filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner and his spouse, the photographer and producer Michele Singer Reiner, have sparked widespread grieving.

This tragedy, found on Dec. 14, 2025, can also be growing the general public’s curiosity in what occurs when killers might inherit wealth from their victims. That’s as a result of Nick Reiner, their son, was charged with two counts of first-degree homicide 4 days after the couple’s deaths at their Los Angeles house.

What’s the ‘slayer rule’?

All states have some type of a slayer rule that stops killers from inheriting from their victims. While the principles differ barely from state to state, they all the time bar murderers from taking advantage of their very own crimes.

Simply put, in the event you’re discovered responsible of killing somebody or plead responsible to their homicide, you’ll be able to’t inherit something out of your sufferer’s property.

In some states, this may transcend inheritance and apply to collectively held property, insurance coverage insurance policies and different kinds of accounts.

Most of those slayer guidelines, together with California’s, apply solely to “felonious and intentional” killings, that means that they don’t apply in the event you unintentionally kill somebody. Although there doesn’t need to be a responsible verdict by a decide or a jury, or a responsible plea from the accused, there should be some discovering by a prison or civil court docket of an intentional and felonious killing.

These guidelines, generally known as slayer guidelines, have a protracted historical past within the United States. They turned extra outstanding following an 1889 homicide case in New York state, through which a 16-year-old boy poisoned his grandfather to get an inheritance that was written into his grandfather’s will.

How usually are slayer guidelines invoked?

It’s onerous to say for certain. As far as we all know, no one’s tried to maintain observe.

Slayer guidelines come into play each time somebody who would in any other case inherit belongings from an property is convicted of or discovered answerable for homicide, and the slayer is entitled to inherit from the sufferer.

These tragic circumstances virtually all the time contain murders dedicated by family. Many of the high-profile ones have been tied to murders that occurred in California.

Famous disinherited murderers embrace Lyle and Erik Menendez, the Californians generally known as the Menendez brothers. In 1996, a jury discovered them responsible of the first-degree homicide of their mother and father, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The Menendez brothers’ mother and father, who had been killed in 1989, had a fortune that at the moment could be price greater than $35 million.

The brothers, who turned eligible for parole however had been denied it in 2025, have been in jail ever since.

Once there was a discovering of an intentional and felonious killing, even when the slayer is later launched on parole – or even when they serve no jail time in any respect – they’d nonetheless not inherit something.

In sensible phrases, which means if one or each of the Menendez brothers had been to win parole sooner or later, they’d nonetheless be ineligible to inherit any of their mother and father’ wealth upon their launch from jail.

California’s slayer rule additionally meant that salesman Scott Peterson, who was convicted of killing his pregnant spouse, Laci Peterson, in 2002, couldn’t acquire the cash he would in any other case have been due from her life insurance coverage coverage.

Peterson has been in jail since 2005.

What can block its software?

In the absence of a homicide conviction, the slayer rule might not apply. For instance, a conviction for a lesser prison offense, similar to manslaughter, may permit the accused – or their attorneys – to argue that the killing was unintentional.

This exception could possibly be related to the prosecution of the Reiners’ murders if it had been to prove that Nick Reiner’s protection can present that substance abuse or schizophrenia rendered him insane when he allegedly killed his mother and father at their Los Angeles house.

On the opposite hand, underneath California legislation, even when there is no such thing as a conviction the probate court docket administering the homicide sufferer’s property might nonetheless individually discover that the killing was intentional and felonious. That civil discovering would bar the slayer from inheriting with no prison conviction.

Does this solely apply to households with huge fortunes?

Slayer guidelines apply to anybody who kills a number of of their family, whether or not their victims had been wealthy, poor or in between.

When giant quantities of cash are at stake, circumstances are inclined to garner extra consideration because of media protection throughout the prison trial and subsequent inheritance litigation.

Who will inherit Rob Reiner’s and Michele Singer Reiner’s wealth?

It’s too quickly for each the general public and the household to know who will inherit what from the Reiners.

Wills are usually public paperwork, though the Reiners might have additionally engaged in different kinds of property planning, similar to trusts, that don’t usually turn into public data. And celebrities with worthwhile mental property rights, similar to copyrights from the Reiners’ many movie and tv properties, have a tendency to ascertain trusts.

Assuming that, like many mother and father, the Reiners left most of their fortune – which reportedly was price some US$200 million – to their youngsters, together with Nick, then California’s slayer statute might come into play. The couple had two different youngsters collectively, Romy and Jake.

Rob Reiner additionally had one other daughter, Tracy Reiner, whom he adopted after his marriage to his first spouse, the actor and filmmaker Penny Marshall.

About the authors

It’s additionally seemingly that the Reiners included charitable bequests of their property plans. They had been sturdy supporters of many causes, together with early childhood improvement.

Might the slayer rule apply to Nick Reiner?

It’s a lot too quickly to know.

It is essential to emphasise that the wills and different property planning paperwork of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner haven’t but been made public. That means what Nick Reiner may stand to inherit, if the slayer rule had been to show irrelevant on this case, is unknown.

Nor, with the investigation of the couple’s deaths nonetheless underway, can anybody make any assumptions about Nick’s innocence or guilt.

And, as of mid-December 2025, an unnamed supply was telling leisure reporters that Nick Reiner’s authorized payments had been being paid for by the Reiner household.