Murder Suspect Seeks $1.5M Trust Fund While Awaiting Trial

When you’re accused of murdering your parents, asking for their money might seem like the worst possible look. But that’s exactly what Nick Reiner, 32, is doing right now—and it’s forcing California courts to grapple with a legal question that sits at the intersection of trust law, criminal intent, and one genuinely uncomfortable ethical minefield.

Here’s the situation: Nick was arrested in December 2025 after his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, were found dead in their Los Angeles home. Michele was 70, Rob was 78. Nick has denied the charges, specifically that he fatally stabbed them. But on Monday, June 8, his legal team filed a petition demanding access to a $1.5 million trust fund his parents established for him before their deaths. According to the petition, Nick turned 30 in 2023 and should have received half the money outright at that age. He claims he’s never gotten it, and after months of repeated requests to the trustee, he’s now taking the matter to court. His stated reasons? He needs to pay for legal counsel and basic necessities while incarcerated.

Enter Rachael Bennett, a certified family law specialist and senior attorney at Sullivan Law&Associates, who breaks down the real tangle here. This case isn’t just about trust law—it invokes California’s slayer rule, a statute specifically designed to prevent someone from profiting off a murder they committed. The logic is straightforward: you can’t kill someone and then inherit their estate. It would be perverse, the law reasoned, to let a murderer cash in on their crime.

But Nick’s defense has a clever angle. He argues the money was already lawfully his before any criminal charges existed. The trust itself is irrevocable, and the petition claims there’s been no judicial declaration that he’s incompetent—so technically, the trustee has no legal grounds to withhold it. Bennett explains the stakes plainly:“This case is really going to test the limits of that slayer rule. It seems intrinsically wrong that Nick Reiner, if he’s convicted of murder, could be given millions of dollars of his own parents’money to defend himself after brutally murdering them. That’s exactly the kind of, what I would call, perverse outcome that the slayer statutes are meant to prevent.”

Here’s where it gets even thornier. Nick has a documented history of schizophrenia and reportedly fired his psychiatrist and changed medications before his parents’deaths. He’s also been candid about past drug abuse. That history matters enormously—and not in ways that help him cleanly. If Nick’s criminal defense relies on an insanity claim (essentially: he was too mentally impaired to form criminal intent), then the trustee can argue in the civil case that he’s legally incompetent to control millions in assets. But if he claims competence to access the trust, that same argument could be used against an insanity defense. It’s a bind that could torpedo whichever strategy he chooses.

His next court hearing is set for September 15, when prosecutors will formally present evidence for the murders. Between now and then, the trust petition will likely test whether an established, irrevocable trust can serve as a legal loophole around the very statute designed to prevent exactly this outcome.