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.

From ‘mail-order brides’ to ‘passport bros,’ the international dating industry often sells traditional gender roles

Julia Meszaros, Texas A&M University-Commerce

Fifteen years ago, when I started studying the international dating industry, few people took the subject seriously. The term “mail-order bride” was treated as a punch line – something outdated, associated with lonely men and poor women who migrated from Eastern Europe, Asia or other places to meet their new husbands in the United States. But I’ve seen firsthand how ideas about gender, intimacy and global mobility have shifted. In 2025, a man going abroad to look for love might call himself a “passport bro” – and celebrate his lifestyle on TikTok. This new generation of young men may have rebranded international dating, but they reflect an age-old theme. Social and economic changes shape how people negotiate love and labor across borders, as I explore in my 2025 book, “Economies of Gender.” In a chaotic world, some men and women turn to traditional gender roles as a source of seeming stability – and that often leads them abroad.

Old industry, new look

The term “mail-order bride” dates back to the 19th century, when so-called frontier brides advertised themselves in newspapers to single men in the American West. After the Civil War, when large numbers of men had died on the East Coast, some women saw migrating to the frontier to marry someone sight unseen as a way to secure stability. That narrative still lingers today in Western novels and films. The modern international matchmaking industry, however, took shape in the 1970s, when catalogs of mostly Filipino women’s photos and addresses were sold to American men. After being pen pals, men would travel to the Philippines to meet and decide whether they wanted to get married. Some scholars consider this a form of human trafficking, but that has been challenged by other scholarship. These catalogs emerged as more U.S. women were entering the workforce and earning their own money. Some men sought wives abroad who they believed would embody more traditional values – prioritizing domestic work and devoting themselves to men and children. Over the next few decades, large numbers of stable, well-paying factory jobs disappeared, further challenging some men’s view of themselves as breadwinners. By 2010, the catalog system had moved online and expanded into a global industry that generated US$2 billion dollars per year. Today, it takes many forms. Most of the industry is online, with email and chat correspondence that charges men but not women. Some agencies provide in-person tours for male clients, and there are higher-end, more personalized matchmaking services as well.

From taboo to televised

What was once stigmatized has become more normalized through reality TV. TLC’s hit series “90 Day Fiance,” which came on air in 2014, has transformed international dating into a lucrative entertainment franchise.

The show and its numerous spin-offs show couples navigating the K-1 visa process, which gives 90 days to marry after a partner enters the country. If the wedding is called off, the foreign fiance or fiancee must return to their country of origin. Many of the featured couples met randomly, in person. A significant number, however, connected through online dating or language-learning sites. Numerous couples’ storylines highlight family and friends of the American partner who question the girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s motives, accusing them of faking love for financial gain and access to a green card. Audiences might watch the show for drama or love stories, but the underlying themes mirror what I’ve seen in the field: relationships shaped by economic inequality and migration, with women often exchanging emotional, domestic and sexual labor in return for financial stability.

Rise of the ‘passport bros’

In recent years, the mail-order bride industry has gotten a cultural revamp, with younger and more diverse men who identify as “passport bros.” This crowd is typically younger than men participating in the commercial international dating industry and more likely to identify as men of color. These men are less likely to pay for formal dating and introduction services. They travel on their own, using free dating apps such as Tinder to meet local women – mostly in Colombia, Brazil and the Dominican Republic. Passport bros say they travel abroad to meet women who are more traditional than the ones they meet at home. Many of the American men I interviewed between 2010 and 2022 talked about Western women as too focused on career, which challenged their idea of themselves as financial providers.

Similarly, my research in Ukraine, Colombia and the Philippines shows that many men using international dating services are motivated by more than just love or cultural curiosity. They are responding to a changing world in which women’s financial independence has challenged traditional male roles. For some, traveling abroad is a way to reassert control and to find relationships that reaffirm a sense of masculine identity. In my interviews, American men looking abroad talked about feeling empowered and having choices, while being ignored in the U.S. dating market. Some recognized that their relative wealth is the cause of this. As one man on a romance tour in Ukraine told me in 2012, “I am here to exchange my financial stability for some Ukrainian woman’s youth and beauty, and I am OK with that.”

Appeal of ‘tradition’

Together, many of these daters illustrate the global pattern I’ve seen across my years of fieldwork: anxiety fuels a longing for traditionalism. What appears to be a return to the past is, in reality, an adaptation to the present. The romance tours, the “90 Day Fiance” phenomenon and the passport bros speak to how people use relationships to navigate the economic instability of the modern world. Gender roles become a way to reestablish order and identity. In the past two decades, rising inflation, stagnant wages and housing shortages have left many people, especially younger generations, feeling economically trapped. The COVID-19 pandemic deepened these inequalities, forcing millions out of the workforce and amplifying the strain of unpaid caregiving, particularly for women. In times of uncertainty, societies often retreat to familiar narratives. Traditional gender roles offer an illusion of stability and order, even if they reinforce inequality. The fantasy of the dependable male provider and the nurturing homemaker resurfaces because it seems to resolve anxieties that the modern economy has made harder to bear. As a sociologist, I study these dynamics not just to understand dating trends but to trace how societies reproduce inequality through intimacy. Until our society addresses stagnant wages, rising costs and the erosion of social safety nets, I believe nostalgia for a clear, gendered hierarchy will continue. In this hierarchy, men are guaranteed women’s labor, and women hold out hope for economic security – which is often seen as romance. Julia Meszaros, Associate Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University-Commerce This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

High Demand Marks “Veggies for Veterans” Event Amid SNAP Delays

Links: https://stmdailynews.com/high-demand-marks-veggies-for-veterans-event-amid-snap-delays/