Facing the possibility of the death penalty for the murder of his parents last year, Nick Reiner is trying to get the best defense money can buy by unlocking a $1.5 million trust fund Rob and Michelle Reiner set up for him decades ago.
“Nick has a defense to present in the criminal case, and he is presently unable to fund it,” declares a petition filed Monday in L.A. Superior Court by Brown Neri Smith & Khan LLP attorney Anita Wu on behalf of the 32-year-old Reiner against trustee Paul Kanin and “incoming trustee” Jodi Montgomery.
Having signed a declaration June 5 confirming the petition, Reiner wants a court order to have the money released to him ASAP, or at least half of it.
“Every additional week of delay is a week in which the counsel of his choice cannot investigate or prepare on his behalf – prejudice to his defense that cannot be undone,” the petition says of the Nick Reiner Children’s Trust, which originated in 1993. “The harm is irreparable, and it grows with each day the Trustee withholds funds that are already Nick’s. In the meantime, for reasons unknown to Petitioner, the Trustee continues to deplete Nick’s funds by paying lawyers to raise one reason after another for holding on to Nick’s money for another two years, all of which violate the plain terms of the Trust. None of this is in the beneficiary’s best interest.”
A hearing on the trust money matter has been scheduled for August 17 before Judge Ruben Garca.
L-R: Rob Reiner, Michele Singer Reiner, Romy Reiner, Nick Reiner, Maria Gilfillan and Jake Reiner at September’s ‘Spinal Tap II: The End Continues’ premiere
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The youngest son of the 78-year-old A Few Good Men director and his 70-year-old photographer spouse faces life behind bars or execution by the state if a jury finds him guilty on the two counts of first-degree murder with “special circumstances” he was charged with soon after being arrested for his parents’ killings on the first day of Hanukkah 2025.
The elder Reiners were discovered dead in their Brentwood home on December 14 by their youngest daughter. Nick Reiner, who has struggled with addiction for years, was picked up by the LAPD a few hours later, miles and miles away from his parents’ home. He had been living with Rob and Michelle Reiner for several weeks at the time of their deaths.
With the currently incarcerated Reiner aiming to once again retain hard-knuckled Alan Jackson as his lead defense attorney, the June 8 petition accuses his trust’s trustee of denying him $750,000 that was due to him upon his 30th birthday. By implication, the filing also predicts Reiner will be likely unable to get the second half of the trust when he turns 35 in just over two years if the courts don’t step in.
Offering full backing to Reiner, Jackson and his firm suddenly dropped out of representing the defendant at a dramatic DTLA news conference January 7 as the Public Defender’s office took over. At the time, Jackson played his cards close to the chest, but it was evident then and confirmed in this week’s filing that it was because there was no money to pay for the top-notch defense Reiner desired.
“Since then, Nick has repeatedly asked that Jackson’s firm resume its representation if funds become available,” the document says. “These are not estate assets, and Nick does not seek them from his parents’ estate,” it adds with a nod to California law preventing inheritance or the likes being utilized in such cases. “They are his own funds. Nick has no other means – to pay for his legal expenses, or for his basic support needs while incarcerated.”
In a declaration of his own attached to the petition, Jackson says: “I have advised Mr. Reiner’s trust counsel that the firm remains committed to representing Mr. Reiner and is willing to consider reasonable alternatives to the original fee arrangement, including modified fee amounts, payment timing, or other funding structures, if doing so would facilitate the release of funds necessary for Mr. Reiner to retain counsel and mount an effective defense.”
Alan Jackson at L.A.’s Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in January
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“Over months of repeated inquiries, the Current Trustee has offered a shifting series of excuses and justifications, none of which can be reconciled with the Trust’s plain terms – most recently, unsubstantiated ‘concerns’ about Nick’s so-called competence to ‘manage a trust,’” the 136-page petition goes on to assert. “The Mandatory Age-30 Distribution is exactly that – mandatory. It does not turn on the Trustee’s subjective views about how Nick might fare managing a trust. That is the whole point: at the mandatory distribution date, those funds ceased to be trust property. They became Nick’s money to use as he sees fit, wholly outside of any trust and beyond any trustee’s supervision.”
Oddly, with the elder Reiners alive when their offspring actually turned 30 on September 14, 2023, no explanation is given why the younger Reiner didn’t get his money at that time. This week’s filing also makes clear that despite a handful of court appearances and months in a cell downtown, “there is no judicial declaration that Nick is incompetent, nor has he been determined to lack capacity by the written statement of two licensed physicians.”
Additionally, if you think you recognize Jodi Montgomery’s name from somewhere, it is from another high-profile court case. Montgomery was appointed temporary conservator for Britney Spears in 2019 when the “Toxic” singer was still under the thumb of the courts. With varying degrees of conflict with the middle-aged singer’s father and support from Spears herself, Montgomery continued in the role until 2021, when the singer was freed from the 13-year conservatorship for better and for worse.
#FreeBritney activists protest in downtown L.A. during a conservatorship hearing for Britney Spears in 2021
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Current Reiner Trustee Kanin, who was appointed in February, told the defendant’s reps in April that he was going to resign. In Wu’s petition, there is an effort to halt that process and Montgomery taking over in order to stop everything going back to square one and relevant accounts being frozen again.
The next hearing in Reiner’s criminal case is on the books for September 15 as his present Public Defender Kimberly Greene and the prosecuting L.A. County District Attorney’s office collect evidence.
