Did Nick Reiner's Parents Lock In His Payout At Birth?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dre.

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
Lots of people getting up in arms about this. So we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about the reality of what could actually happen here in the Nick Reiner case. Nick Reiner just filed a 136 page petition demanding over one and a half million dollars from a trust his parents set up when he was a baby.
As my doorbell rings.
And here's the uncomfortable part. He might actually have an argument. The petition says the payouts were mandatory at 30 and 35 in terms of your spell. It's okay. We're good. Mandatory at 30 and 35 No strings, no discretion. Nick turned 30 more than two years before his parents were killed and reportedly never saw a dime of it. So that's the interesting part going into this. This payday would have been two years before the murders took place, of what he was supposed to get, mandatorily. This is the claim that the Nick camp is making. And he wants it. He wants to use it because he wants to hire Alan Jackson back as his representative. And the way it's sitting right now, they're saying, no, you're not getting the money. Eric, let's walk through this. I mean, what sort of grounds does he stand on to get his money?

**Eric Faddis** (1:35)
Reasonably solid grounds, I think, Tony, with respect to the disbursement to which he was entitled at 30
With respect to the 35-year-old disbursement, that's a whole different story. But for the 30-year-old one, that was before any allegation that he had harmed his parents. It preceded that event in time. And so it sounds like he was legally entitled to those funds. For some reason, they were not paid. And it's appropriate to bring a legal action to try to enforce what a trust says and to get those funds.

**Robin Dre** (2:08)
Yeah, I'm curious, Eric. I did a lot of research on this this morning just because I'm trying to understand trust, why people have trust. Basically, it's for people, a lot of money, want to protect their money is the bottom line of it. But I'm really curious because, yeah, they wrote it in. And once the family creates a trust and they created it when he was born, it's like removed from their control. It's tax sheltered, it's entitled to the kids, and they do it gradually as they get older and hopefully more mature, they can use it more responsibly.
So at what point, then how come the trustee of this, and the new trustee came on board, I guess, about a year ago from this, how does he even have control when it's actually written into the contract to begin with? So how could he even withhold it a couple of years ago? Even though I know there was issues with his mental health and things like that, but how could he even held it back back then?

**Eric Faddis** (3:02)
It's not entirely clear to me what legal authority the trustee would have to withhold those funds.
I mean, the trustee in this kind of an irrevocable mandatory trust scenario is really charged with effectuating the terms of that trust. So they sort of do the mechanics of it. They make sure people get paid, and I'm not aware of some legal authority this trustee would have to say, for whatever reason, I don't like this guy, or his mental health is concerning me, or whatever, or his substance use, what have you. I'm just not going to give him these funds. I'm not sure the trustee has that discretion.

**Robin Dre** (3:39)
Yeah, because I actually raised a question with me in the sense of, all right, so, because like you said, the language in that trust, I've never seen this one, but doing the research on them in general, it's very solid, rock solid. It is what it is. Could he been becoming legal jeopardy for actually not executing it according to the timeline?

**Eric Faddis** (4:01)
Yeah, potentially. I mean, it's sort of, it could be just a general negligence theory that, hey, you had a duty under this trust to disperse these funds, and you ought to have, and you didn't, and now this person is out all of this money, and perhaps Nick has suffered other claimed losses from the non-dispersement, and yeah, that trustee could be in a precarious situation.

**Robin Dre** (4:26)
And one more before I bounce back, Tony, so sorry. So again, my conjecture hat is on, this is what happens when I'm away for a couple of days, right?
So Alan Jackson said he's willing to be back on the case now, now that there's money back on the table, and he didn't say that first time, but we said it's probably because of money. So is there a possibility that Nick, now can he do this when he's being charged with this, could file a civil lawsuit against the trustee that Alan Jackson could then also do to get money both from the trust as well as the civil lawsuit from withholding?