Is Nick Reiner About to Beat the Law That Stopped the Menendez Brothers?
Everybody knows the slayer statute, even if they don’t know the name — it’s the law that kept the Menendez brothers from ever touching their parents’ fortune. So when word broke about what happened to Nick Reiner’s trust fund — a petition demanding more than a million and a half dollars from a trust his parents built — the internet ruled in one sentence: case closed, he gets nothing. This episode is about why California Probate Code 250 does not work the way most people think it does.
Two surprises, and they cut in opposite directions. First, the statute can hit faster than you’d expect: a probate judge doesn’t have to wait for a murder conviction. A civil court can strip a beneficiary on a preponderance of the evidence — more likely than not — the same machinery that took Scott Peterson’s claim to Laci’s life insurance while his criminal appeal was still alive. “Presumed innocent” doesn’t bind a probate courtroom. Second, the statute may never reach the heart of this money at all. The slayer rule takes what you’d gain from a death — and according to the petition, half this trust came due on Nick’s thirtieth birthday, twenty-seven months before his parents died. You can’t lose to that rule what was already yours before anyone was killed.
We map all three pots of Reiner money — the frozen family fortune, the age-35 half, the overdue age-30 distribution — and put a verdict on each. Then we sit with the question no statute will ever answer: Rob and Michele were alive for more than two years after that payout came due. Why didn’t they make it? Hidden Killers follows the file wherever it leads — and this time, it leads somewhere uncomfortable.
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