The deadly stabbings of filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner and his spouse, the photographer and manufacturer Michele Singer Reiner, have sparked in style grieving. This tragedy, came upon on Dec. 14, 2025, may be expanding the general public’s pastime in what occurs when killers may inherit wealth from their sufferers. That’s as a result of Nick Reiner, their son, used to be 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 forestalls killers from inheriting from their sufferers. Whilst the principles vary rather from state to state, they at all times bar murderers from making the most of their very own crimes.
Merely put, should you’re discovered to blame of killing somebody or plead to blame to their homicide, you’ll be able to’t inherit the rest out of your sufferer’s property.
In some states, this would possibly transcend inheritance and follow to collectively held assets, insurance coverage insurance policies and different types of accounts.
All these slayer laws, together with California’s, follow best to “felonious and intentional” killings, which means that they don’t follow should you by chance kill somebody. Even if there doesn’t must be a to blame verdict through a pass judgement on or a jury, or a to blame plea from the accused, there will have to be some discovering through a legal or civil court docket of an intentional and felonious killing.
Those laws, referred to as slayer laws, have a protracted historical past in the US. They was extra outstanding following an 1889 homicide case in New York state, by which a 16-year-old boy poisoned his grandfather to get an inheritance that used to be written into his grandfather’s will.
How ceaselessly are slayer laws invoked?
It’s laborious to mention needless to say. So far as we all know, no person’s attempted to stay monitor.
Slayer laws come into play on every occasion somebody who would in a different way inherit property from an property is convicted of or discovered answerable for homicide, and the slayer is entitled to inherit from the sufferer.
Those tragic circumstances nearly at all times contain murders dedicated through relations. Lots of the high-profile ones had been tied to murders that befell in California.
Well-known disinherited murderers come with Lyle and Erik Menendez, the Californians referred to as the Menendez brothers. In 1996, a jury discovered them to blame of the first-degree homicide in their oldsters, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The Menendez brothers’ oldsters, who had been killed in 1989, had a fortune that lately can be value greater than $35 million.
The brothers, who was eligible for parole however had been denied it in 2025, had been in jail ever since.
As soon as there was a discovering of an intentional and felonious killing, although the slayer is later launched on parole – or although they serve no jail time in any respect – they’d nonetheless no longer inherit the rest.
In sensible phrases, that suggests if one or either one of the Menendez brothers had been to win parole one day, they’d nonetheless be ineligible to inherit any in their oldsters’ wealth upon their unlock from jail.
California’s slayer rule additionally intended that salesman Scott Peterson, who used to be convicted of killing his pregnant spouse, Laci Peterson, in 2002, couldn’t gather the cash he would in a different way had been due from her existence insurance plans.
Peterson has been in jail since 2005.
Erik Menendez, left, and Lyle Menendez, noticed status trial for his or her oldsters’ murders, in 1994. They had been convicted in 1996.
Ted Soqui/Sygma by way of Getty Pictures
What can block its software?
Within the absence of a homicide conviction, the slayer rule would possibly not follow. For instance, a conviction for a lesser legal offense, corresponding to manslaughter, would possibly permit the accused – or their attorneys – to argue that the killing used to be unintended.
This exception may well be related to the prosecution of the Reiners’ murders if it had been to prove that Nick Reiner’s protection can display that substance abuse or schizophrenia rendered him insane when he allegedly killed his oldsters at their Los Angeles house.
However, beneath California legislation, although there is not any conviction the probate court docket administering the homicide sufferer’s property may nonetheless one after the other to find that the killing used to be intentional and felonious. That civil discovering would bar the slayer from inheriting with no legal conviction.
Rob Reiner and his son Nick, noticed in 2016 talking about ‘Being Charlie,’ the film a couple of younger guy’s battle with substance use that they made in combination.
Laura Cavanaugh/FilmMagic by way of Getty Pictures
Does this best follow to households with large fortunes?
Slayer laws follow to someone who kills a number of in their relations, whether or not their sufferers had been wealthy, deficient or in between.
When massive quantities of cash are at stake, circumstances have a tendency to garner extra consideration because of media protection all the way through the legal trial and next 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 circle of relatives to grasp who will inherit in the long run from the Reiners.
Assuming that, like many fogeys, the Reiners left maximum in their fortune – which reportedly used to be value some US$200 million – to their kids, together with Nick, then California’s slayer statute would possibly come into play. The couple had two different kids in combination, Romy and Jake.
Rob Reiner additionally had every other daughter, Tracy Reiner, whom he followed after his marriage to his first spouse, the actor and filmmaker Penny Marshall.
It’s additionally most probably that the Reiners incorporated charitable bequests of their property plans. They had been robust supporters of many reasons, together with early adolescence building.
Would possibly the slayer rule follow to Nick Reiner?
It’s a lot too quickly to grasp.
It is very important emphasize that the wills and different property making plans paperwork of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner have no longer but been made public. That suggests what Nick Reiner would possibly stand to inherit, if the slayer rule had been to turn out beside the point on this case, is unknown.
Nor, with the investigation of the couple’s deaths nonetheless underway, can someone make any assumptions about Nick’s innocence or guilt.
And, as of mid-December 2025, an unnamed supply used to be telling leisure journalists that Nick Reiner’s felony expenses had been being paid for through the Reiner circle of relatives.
