When Nick Renner goes on trial for murder, a mediator will decide whether he can use money set aside by his parents to defend himself.
Lawyers for Reiner and the trust told a judge on Friday morning that they had reached an agreement for “global mediation” to begin in mid-December. The terms of any settlement agreement still need to be approved by a judge.
Reiner, 32, said he wants the trust fund to pay $558,000 in 2023 so he can rehire prominent criminal defense attorney Alan Jackson to defend him against charges that he killed Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner in their Brentwood home last December. Jackson no longer serves as Lehner’s attorney due to financial issues and has been replaced by Los Angeles County Deputy Public Defender Kimberly Greene.
Authorities say Renner stabbed his parents to death in their Brentwood home in December. The motive for the killing has not been made public. Renner was charged with murder earlier this year and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted at trial. Los Angeles County District Atty. Nathan Hochman said last month he would not seek the death penalty in Lehner’s case.
Representatives for the trust argued that Lehner was barred from using the fund because of California’s so-called “killer statute,” which prohibits convicted killers from profiting from their crimes in various ways, including through inheritance claims.
Reiner’s legal team argued the statute did not apply because he had not yet been convicted of a crime. The funds he is seeking also include a payment he was supposed to receive on his 30th birthday in September 2023, more than two years before the murders, according to his lawyers. They say Lehner never received the money at the time.
“This case has nothing to do with the much larger Lehner Family Trust, which holds the estate assets of Nick’s parents and the inheritance they left to their children,” his attorneys argued in a motion filed earlier this year. “This case is about money that Nick’s parents set aside for him alone and irrevocably, to be paid to him on two fixed dates: half at age 30 and the balance at age 35.”
Lauriann Wright, an attorney representing the current trustee, said she believed the two sides could reach an agreement to pay some of the money Reiner was eligible for before the murders, but anything beyond that would be “more difficult to resolve.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ruben Garcia has scheduled a hearing in March 2027 to decide whether to approve the settlement.