Nick Reiner seeks trust fund release to pay murder defense fees

Nick Reiner is asking a probate judge to force release of more than $1.5 million from a family trust to help fund his defense in the killings of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, setting up a stark fight over whether a murder defendant can tap inherited assets tied to the very family he is accused of destroying.

The 136-page petition, filed in Los Angeles County probate court on Monday, June 8, says the trust was created in 1993 and was designed to pay Nick Reiner half of the money when he turned 30 and the rest when he turns 35. He is 32 now, and the filing says he already missed a distribution that was supposed to have been made two years ago. It argues that trustee Paul R. Kanin has withheld the money without legal justification and has offered shifting explanations, including concerns about Reiner’s competence, which the petition says are not grounds to block a mandatory payout.

The request reaches beyond legal bills. The filing says the money is needed for private counsel and for basic support while Reiner is incarcerated, including commissary items such as socks and soap. It also says he has no other source of funding for legal representation or day-to-day necessities behind bars. That makes the case more than a fight over a trust account: it is a test of whether a beneficiary’s accused conduct can be used to freeze assets that were meant to be distributed on a fixed schedule.

Reiner, 32, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his parents, who were found stabbed to death on Dec. 14, 2025, in their Brentwood home in Los Angeles. Prosecutors also filed special-circumstance allegations involving multiple murders and knife use. At a Dec. 16, 2025, news conference, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said the killings could carry life without parole or the death penalty, though prosecutors had not yet decided whether to seek capital punishment.

The trust dispute also reflects the breakdown of Reiner’s private defense. Alan Jackson initially represented him, but later withdrew in January, and a public defender, Kimberly Greene, took over. The filing says Reiner’s siblings, Jake and Romy Reiner, first agreed to pay Jackson’s fee, then reversed course. Reiner also had a yearlong mental health conservatorship in 2020, a detail likely to loom over any competency fight as the court decides whether the trust money must be released.