Nick Reiner could reportedly use his parents’ money to pay his legal costs after being charged with their murder.
The 32-year-old son of Hollywood movie director and actor Rob Reiner has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Rob and his wife of three decades, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their Brentwood, LA, homes on December 14 in an incident cops declared an apparent ‘homicide’.
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office says the couple, who shared three children, were fatally stabbed, while the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office lists their cause of death as ‘multiple sharp force injuries’.
Their youngest child, daughter Romy, 28, reportedly found the pair in their $13.5m mansion before making the desperate calls to emergency services.
Reiner has since hired high-profile celebrity attorney Alan Jackson to represent him, and a lawyer has addressed whether the 32-year-old would be eligible to inherit any of his parents’ money or use it to pay legal fees.
Nick Reiner has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in suspicion of his parents’ deaths (Laura Cavanaugh/FilmMagic)
The Reiner’s estate is estimated to be $200 million, according to Hello! Magazine.
Estate planning lawyer Scott Schomer told The New York Post that Nick could access the funds if his siblings, Jake and Romy, or other potential beneficiaries, approved the decision.
“Sort of like a CEO to shareholders, a trustee works for the beneficiaries,” Schomer said, per The New York Post. “A trustee is holding the assets that belong to the beneficiaries and is making decisions about what to do with the money.”
California attorney Neama Rahmani also told the outlet Nick could receive payments if a trust fund were set up before his parents’ deaths, though other trustees could step in to stop distributions if they no longer ‘further the purposes of the trust’.
Schomer also said if the suspect is found guilty, then the trustees who approved the payments could be held liable for the decision.
According to Sean Weissbart, an estates and trust attorney at Blank Rome LLP, Reiner will become ineligible to inherit from his parents’ estate if convicted under the ‘Slayer’ law.
Rob and Michele were found killed on December 14 (Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch via Getty Images)
He told People: “California has what’s called a slayer statute, which says if you kill someone that you’re going to inherit from, you lose your inheritance and any right to serve as a fiduciary of their estate. So assuming he’s convicted of this murder, he’s out as beneficiary, along with any fiduciary appointments he may have.”
Weissbart added that in the case of a possible conviction, Reiner ‘would be disqualified, and everything would just go — probably — in three equal shares [instead]’.
It is currently unclear if Nick does have access to, or plans on using, the Reiner estate to fund his defence.
Moments before police apprehended Reiner, CCTV footage caught the couple’s eldest son strolling around a gas station store in Exposition Park.
After being booked for the federal murder charge, where he could face the death penalty if found guilty, he was due to make an initial court appearance on Tuesday (December 16), but Jackson said he was not able to attend for medical reasons.
