How the ‘slayer rule’ might play a role in determining who will inherit wealth from Rob Reiner and his wife

Naomi Cahn, University of Virginia and Reid Kress Weisbord, Rutgers University – Newark The fatal stabbings of filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner and his wife, the photographer and producer Michele Singer Reiner, have sparked widespread grieving. This tragedy, discovered on Dec. 14, 2025, is also increasing the public’s interest in what happens when killers could inherit wealth from their victims. That’s because Nick Reiner, their son, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder four days after the couple’s deaths at their Los Angeles home.

What’s the ‘slayer rule’?

All states have some form of a slayer rule that prevents killers from inheriting from their victims. While the rules differ slightly from state to state, they always bar murderers from profiting from their own crimes. Simply put, if you’re found guilty of killing someone or plead guilty to their murder, you can’t inherit anything from your victim’s estate. In some states, this might go beyond inheritance and apply to jointly held property, insurance policies and other kinds of accounts. Most of these slayer rules, including California’s, apply only to “felonious and intentional” killings, meaning that they don’t apply if you accidentally kill someone. Although there doesn’t have to be a guilty verdict by a judge or a jury, or a guilty plea from the accused, there must be some finding by a criminal or civil court of an intentional and felonious killing. These rules, known as slayer rules, have a long history in the United States. They became more prominent following an 1889 murder case in New York state, in which a 16-year-old boy poisoned his grandfather to get an inheritance that was written into his grandfather’s will.

How often are slayer rules invoked?

It’s hard to say for sure. As far as we know, nobody’s tried to keep track. Slayer rules come into play whenever someone who would otherwise inherit assets from an estate is convicted of or found liable for murder, and the slayer is entitled to inherit from the victim. These tragic cases almost always involve murders committed by relatives. Many of the high-profile ones have been tied to murders that occurred in California. Famous disinherited murderers include Lyle and Erik Menendez, the Californians known as the Menendez brothers. In 1996, a jury found them guilty of the first-degree murder of their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The Menendez brothers’ parents, who were killed in 1989, had a fortune that today would be worth more than $35 million. The brothers, who became eligible for parole but were denied it in 2025, have been in prison ever since. Once there has been a finding of an intentional and felonious killing, even if the slayer is later released on parole – or even if they serve no prison time at all – they would still not inherit anything. In practical terms, that means if one or both of the Menendez brothers were to win parole in the future, they would still be ineligible to inherit any of their parents’ wealth upon their release from prison. California’s slayer rule also meant that salesman Scott Peterson, who was convicted of killing his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson, in 2002, couldn’t collect the money he would otherwise have been due from her life insurance policy. Peterson has been in prison since 2005.

What can block its application?

In the absence of a murder conviction, the slayer rule may not apply. For example, a conviction for a lesser criminal offense, such as manslaughter, might allow the accused – or their lawyers – to argue that the killing was unintentional. This exception could be relevant to the prosecution of the Reiners’ murders if it were to turn out that Nick Reiner’s defense can show that substance abuse or schizophrenia rendered him insane when he allegedly killed his parents at their Los Angeles home. On the other hand, under California law, even if there is no conviction the probate court administering the murder victim’s estate could still separately find that the killing was intentional and felonious. That civil finding would bar the slayer from inheriting without a criminal conviction.

Does this only apply to families with big fortunes?

Slayer rules apply to anyone who kills one or more of their relatives, whether their victims were rich, poor or in between. When large amounts of money are at stake, cases tend to garner more attention due to media coverage during the criminal trial and subsequent inheritance litigation.

Who will inherit Rob Reiner’s and Michele Singer Reiner’s wealth?

It’s too soon for both the public and the family to know who will inherit ultimately from the Reiners. Wills are typically public documents, although the Reiners may have also engaged in other types of estate planning, such as trusts, that do not typically become public records. And celebrities with valuable intellectual property rights, such as copyrights from the Reiners’ many film and television properties, tend to establish trusts. Assuming that, like many parents, the Reiners left most of their fortune – which reportedly was worth some US$200 million – to their children, including Nick, then California’s slayer statute may come into play. The couple had two other children together, Romy and Jake. Rob Reiner also had another daughter, Tracy Reiner, whom he adopted after his marriage to his first wife, the actor and filmmaker Penny Marshall. It’s also likely that the Reiners included charitable bequests in their estate plans. They were strong supporters of many causes, including early childhood development.

Might the slayer rule apply to Nick Reiner?

It’s much too soon to know. It is important to emphasize that the wills and other estate planning documents of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner have not yet been made public. That means what Nick Reiner might stand to inherit, if the slayer rule were to prove irrelevant in this case, is unknown. Nor, with the investigation of the couple’s deaths still underway, can anyone make any assumptions about Nick’s innocence or guilt. And, as of mid-December 2025, an unnamed source was telling entertainment reporters that Nick Reiner’s legal bills were being paid for by the Reiner family. Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of Virginia and Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University – Newark This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Girls and boys solve math problems differently – with similar short-term results but different long-term outcomes

Sarah Lubienski, Indiana University; Colleen Ganley, Florida State University, and Martha Makowski, University of Alabama Among high school students and adults, girls and women are much more likely to use traditional, step-by-step algorithms to solve basic math problems – such as lining up numbers to add, starting with the ones place, and “carrying over” a number when needed. Boys and men are more likely to use alternative shortcuts, such as rounding both numbers, adding the rounded figures, and then adjusting to remove the rounding. But those who use traditional methods on basic problems are less likely to solve more complex math problems correctly. These are the main findings of two studies our research team published in November 2025. This new evidence may help explain an apparent contradiction in the existing research – girls do better at math in school, but boys do better on high-stakes math tests and are more likely to pursue math-intensive careers. Our research focuses not just on getting correct answers, but on the methods students use to arrive at them. We find that boys and girls approach math problems differently, in ways that persist into adulthood.

A possible paradox

In a 2016 study of U.S. elementary students, boys outnumbered girls 4 to 1 among the top 1% of scorers on a national math test. And over many decades, boys have been about twice as likely as girls to be among the top scorers on the SAT and AP math exams. However, girls tend to be more diligent in elementary school and get better grades in math class throughout their schooling. And girls and boys across the grades tend to score similarly on state math tests, which tend to be more aligned with the school curriculum and have more familiar problems than the SAT or other national tests. Beyond grades and test scores, the skills and confidence acquired in school carry far beyond, into the workforce. In lucrative STEM occupations, such as computer science and engineering, men outnumber women 3 to 1. Researchers have considered several explanations for this disparity, including differences in math confidence and occupational values, such as prioritizing helping others or making money. Our study suggests an additional factor to consider: gender differences in approaches to math problems. When older adults think of math, they may recall memorizing times tables or doing the tedious, long-division algorithm. Memorization and rule-following can pay off on math tests focused on procedures taught in school. But rule-following has its limits and seems to provide more payoff among low-achieving than high-achieving students in classrooms. More advanced math involves solving new, perplexing problems rather than following rules.

Differing strategies

In looking at earlier studies of young children, our research team was struck by findings that young boys use more inventive strategies on computation problems, whereas girls more often use standard algorithms or counting. We wondered whether these differences disappear after elementary school, or whether they persist and relate to gender disparities in more advanced math outcomes. In an earlier study, we surveyed students from two high schools with different demographic characteristics to see whether they were what we called bold problem-solvers. We asked them to rate how much they agreed or disagreed with specific statements, such as “I like to think outside the box when I solve math problems.” Boys reported bolder problem-solving tendencies than girls did. Importantly, students who reported bolder problem-solving tendencies scored higher on a math problem-solving test we administered. Our newer studies echo those earlier results but reveal more specifics about how boys and girls, and men and women, approach basic math problems.

Algorithms and teacher-pleasing

In the first study, we gave three questions to more than 200 high school students: “25 x 9 = ___,” “600 – 498 = ___,” and “19 + 47 + 31 = ___.” Each question could be solved with a traditional algorithm or with a mental shortcut, such as solving 25 x 9 by first multiplying 25 x 8 to get 200 and then adding the final 25 to get 225. Regardless of their gender, students were equally likely to solve these basic computation items correctly. But there was a striking gender difference in how they arrived at that answer. Girls were almost three times as likely as boys – 52% versus 18% – to use a standard algorithm on all three items. Boys were far more likely than girls – 51% versus 15% – to never use an algorithm on the questions. We suspected that girls’ tendency to use algorithms might stem from greater social pressure toward compliance, including complying with traditional teacher expectations. So, we also asked all the students eight questions to probe how much they try to please their teachers. We also wanted to see whether algorithm use might relate to gender differences in more advanced problem-solving, so we gave students several complex math problems from national tests, including the SAT. As we suspected, we found that girls were more likely to report a desire to please teachers, such as by completing work as directed. Those who said they did have that desire used the standard algorithm more often. Also, the boys in our sample scored higher than the girls on the complex math problems. Importantly, even though students who used algorithms on the basic computation items were just as likely to compute these items correctly, algorithm users did worse on the more complex math problems.

Continuing into adulthood

In our second study, we gave 810 adults just one problem: “125 + 238 = ___.” We asked them to add mentally, which we expected would discourage them from using an algorithm. Again, there was no gender difference in answering correctly. But 69% of women, compared to 46% of men, reported using the standard algorithm for their mental calculation, rather than using another strategy entirely. We also gave the adults a more advanced problem-solving test, this time focused on probability-related reasoning, such as the chances that rolling a seven-sided die would result in an even number. Similar to our first study, women and those who used the standard algorithm on the computation problem performed worse on the reasoning test.

The importance of inventiveness

We identified some factors that may play a role in these gender differences, including spatial-thinking skills, which may help people develop alternate calculation approaches. Anxiety about taking tests and perfectionism, both more prevalent among women, may also be a factor. We are also interested in the power of gender-specific social pressures on girls. National data has shown that young girls exhibit more studious behavior than do boys. And the high school girls we studied were more likely than boys to report they made a specific effort to meet teachers’ expectations. More research definitely is needed to better understand this dynamic, but we hypothesize that the expectation some girls feel to be compliant and please others may drive teacher-pleasing tendencies that result in girls using algorithms more frequently than boys, who are more socialized to be risk-takers. While compliant behavior and standard math methods often lead to correct answers and good grades in school, we believe schools should prepare all students – regardless of gender – for when they face unfamiliar problems that require inventive problem-solving skills, whether in daily life, on high-stakes tests or in math-intensive professions. Sarah Lubienski, Professor of Mathematics Education, Indiana University; Colleen Ganley, Professor of Developmental Psychology, Florida State University, and Martha Makowski, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, University of Alabama This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.