Nick Reiner’s Criminal Case – Which Arises Following The Deaths Of His Parents Rob And Michele Reiner – Puts California’s Slayer Statute In The Spotlight And Begs The Question: Does New York Have A Slayer Statute?

Nick Reiner stands accused, but not convicted, of killing his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner (Carly Thomas, “Nick Reiner Blocked from Trust Fund Due to ‘Slayer Statute’ Amid Charges for Parents’ Murder”, The Hollywood Reporter, [last viewed on August 23, 2026]).  He has requested access to funds contained in a trust that his parents created for him (asserting that he needs the funds to pay his criminal defense attorneys), but the trustee of that trust has rejected Nick’s request, based upon California’s slayer statute (id.).  California’s slayer statute “prevents a ‘person who feloniously and intentionally kills [a] decedent’ from inheriting ‘any property, interest, or benefit under a will of the decedent, or a trust created by or for the benefit of the decedent[’]’’ (id.).  Does New York have a similar statute?

New York does not have a slayer statute (Matter of Demesyeux, 42 Misc3d 730, 734 [Sur Ct, Nassau County 2013]), but it does have a common-law “slayer rule” that dates back to the New York Court of Appeals’ decision in Riggs v Palmer, 115 NY 506 (1889).  In Riggs, the Court of Appeals wrote: “No one shall be permitted to profit by his [or her] own fraud, or to take advantage of his [or her] own wrong, or to found any claim upon his [or her] own iniquity, or to acquire property by his [or her] own crime” (id. at 511).  Since Riggs, New York courts have “reaffirmed the applicability of the common-law general principle that one should not be permitted to profit by taking the life of another and, in particular, that one who feloniously murders shall not be entitled to share in his [or her] victim’s estate” (Demesyeux, 42 Misc3d at 734).

 Riggs’ application “is not always straightforward, and not all wrongful conduct will disqualify a person” from inheriting from his or her victim’s estate or assets (id. at 735).  With that being said, a “criminal conviction either by plea or after trial is conclusive proof of its underlying facts and collaterally estops a party from relitigating the issues” in Surrogate’s Court (id.). 

New York courts have addressed “whether a person who is found not responsible by reason of insanity is disqualified from sharing in his or her victim’s estate” (id.).  On the one hand, in Matter of Wirth, 59 Misc2d 300, 303 (Sur Ct, Erie County 1969), the Surrogate’s Court concluded that a man who “was found not responsible by reason of insanity” for killing his wife could receive an intestate share of his wife’s estate.  On the other hand, however, in Matter of Demesyeux, 42 Misc3d at 738-39, the Surrogate’s Court held (in disqualifying a mother who killed her own children from receiving any of the wrongful death settlement proceeds that arose from her children’s deaths) that “a person found not responsible for a crime due to mental disease or defect who has the ability to recognize that [his or] her conduct was morally wrong when undertaken shall not financially benefit from that action.”

 While New York does not have a slayer statute, New York’s well-developed body of caselaw concerning the slayer rule articulated in Riggs properly addresses the public policy considerations that California’s slayer statute resolves.  Indeed, New York’s slayer rule ensures that a person who takes another person’s life generally will not benefit from his or her victim’s estate or assets. 

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