Nick Reiner indicted for murder of parents Rob and Michele Reiner
Nick Reiner has officially been indicted for the December 2025 stabbing deaths of his parents Michele and Rob Reiner.
Current and former managers of Nick Reiner’s trust fund are opposing his request to access the money to pay for a defense attorney and cover “basic necessities” while he remains jailed.
In an Aug. 11 court filing obtained by USA TODAY, a licensed professional fiduciary overseeing the trust fund that the late “When Harry Met Sally” director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, set up for their children referenced California’s slayer statute in arguing it would be premature to allow the 32-year-old to access the funds.
The outcome of Nick Reiner’s upcoming trial “will determine who is entitled to the Trust Estate, and an interim distribution would be irreversible,” a lawyer for successor trustee Jodi Pais Montgomery wrote. “The disputed property is therefore ‘reasonably in dispute,’ and the governing framework supports the Trustee’s decision to preserve it rather than pay it out.”
In a June 8 petition, Nick Reiner requested half of the trust’s balance, which he was allegedly entitled to receive upon turning 30. The disbursement would have totaled $558,000, according to Montgomery, who said that “he left the funds in the Trust and did not demand them until April 2026.”
The slayer statute bars people from inheriting from someone they are convicted of killing or are found to have unlawfully killed. If convicted, Nick Reiner would be deemed to have predeceased his parents for inheritance purposes.
Nick Reiner has been behind bars since Dec. 14, 2025, when law enforcement and prosecutors claim he used a knife to fatally stab his parents at their Los Angeles home. He has maintained his innocence.
A lawyer for the former successor trustee, Paul Kanin, also filed a response to Nick Reiner’s petition on Aug. 13.
“Nick’s sense of urgency is real, but it did not arise in a vacuum,” the filing read. “It arises from the deaths of his parents, the very settlors of the Trust at issue, and Nick is presently accused of causing those deaths.”
It continued: “While Nick is presumed innocent of that accusation (and nothing in this Response and Objection should be read to suggest otherwise), no one, not this Court, nor the parties, knows how the criminal proceedings against Nick will ultimately resolve.”
A hearing in the case is scheduled for Aug. 17.
Nick Reiner, Rob and Michele Reiner’s youngest son, is facing two counts of murder with the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder by means of lying in wait. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Nick Reiner’s lawyer says slayer statute doesn’t affect funds he’s owed
In an Aug. 16 statement to USA TODAY, Nick Reiner’s attorney, Anita Wu, pushed back against claims that the slayer statute prevents him from accessing funds to which he was entitled.
“This trust has nothing to do with an ‘inheritance’ from Nick’s parents – it’s an entirely separate fund they gave him decades ago in an irrevocable trust, with mandatory distribution dates. The slayer statute doesn’t apply to money that already belonged to Nick, and in any event he is presumed innocent,” Wu wrote.
“The trustees are paying their lawyers incredibly large amounts from Nick’s trust to come up with one reason after another to deny him access to it — spending his money while refusing to release any of it to him without a court order, even for basic commissary items, or to defend against the charges that he intentionally ‘slayed’ his parents,” she continued. “We believe that’s fundamentally wrong, and it’s inconsistent with both the trust terms and the law.”
Montgomery said in her Aug. 11 filing that Michele Singer Reiner told a former trustee that though Nick Reiner was aware he could take his Age 30 Distribution – half of the amount in his trust he was to receive in 2023, with the other half given when he turns 35 – he allowed the money to remain untouched. But on Aug. 14, he disputed this characterization in a declaration that said, “I did not ask or authorize my mother to give such consent on my behalf, and I do not recall signing or being asked to sign any document giving that consent.”
In January, Nick Reiner’s high-powered defense attorney Alan Jackson stepped down because of “circumstances beyond his control.” In a declaration included in Nick Reiner’s June petition, Jackson wrote that his “firm stands ready, willing, and able to resume representation of Mr. Reiner” if funds were to become available.
Contributing: Liza Esquibias