In this episode, Jill explores one of the most fascinating intersections of true crime and estate law: the slayer statute. She dives into a real 2025 Michigan Court of Appeals case involving a trust, an unexpected beneficiary, an alleged murder-for-hire plot, and two deaths by natural causes. The big question: Can you inherit from someone you planned—but failed—to kill? The answer reveals just how narrow the slayer statute really is and why understanding your estate plan matters more than you think.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
The Case Background
Red Flags in the Trust Administration
The Alleged Murder-for-Hire Plot
How the Slayer Statute Works (and Doesn’t Work)
Big Lessons for Listeners
Resources & Links
Jill’s Estate Plan Audit: https://www.deathreadiness.com/audit
Episode 41: Why Losing Your Original Will Could Cost Your Family Everything
Episode 44: Avoiding the Hidden Tax Trap in Lifetime Gifts
Connect with Jill:
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The Death Readiness Podcast
Episode: 45
Title: Can you Inherit from Someone You Killed (or Tried to Kill)?
Host: Jill Mastroianni (Solo)
Published: November 14, 2025
Jill Mastroianni (00:00): The slayer statute stops killers from inheriting, but what if the murder was planned, thwarted, and the intended victims died naturally? Today’s episode explores that murky middle ground.
Welcome to the Death Readiness Podcast. This is not your dad’s estate planning podcast. I’m Jill Mastroianni, former estate attorney, current realist, and your guide to wills, trusts, probate and the conversations no one wants to have. If your Google search history includes, “Do I need a trust?” “What exactly is probate?” and “Am I supposed to do something with mom’s Will?” you’re in the right place.
(00:50) Last week, I drove from Michigan to New York to New Jersey and back, nearly 40 hours in the car over four days. And somewhere between dog walks, runs, and the never-ending loop of school drop-offs and pickups, I’ve usually listened to all my regular podcasts. Entrepreneurship, podcasting, a sprinkle of true crime — I stay pretty current.
Which meant that on this long, mostly solo road trip, I had no backlog of podcasts. I’d already burned through my usual shows, including my true-crime favorites like Dark Down East and Park Predators. So I dove deeper into the true-crime universe than I normally do. I can’t say I enjoyed it — unsolved murder mysteries on a dark rural New York stretch aren’t exactly comforting — but they kept me wide awake.
The world of true crime entertainment is endless. There seems to be a podcast for every murder mystery, every rabbit hole. People absolutely love these stories.
(01:59) But do you know what’s missing?
What happens to the victim’s estate after the murder?
So today, I’m going to fill that tiny, admittedly morbid, gap.
Also, after releasing this past Tuesday’s episode, Avoiding the Hidden Tax Trap in Lifetime Gifts, which was… let’s be honest, a little heavy on the technical side, I wanted to give you something lighter. And nothing says “light” like talking about murder and inheritance, right?
In Episode 41, Why Losing Your Original Will Could Cost Your Family Everything, I mentioned a legal rule called the slayer statute. It says that if you intentionally kill someone you’d otherwise inherit from, the law steps in and says you don’t get anything. You’re cut off — no inheritance, no life insurance, no retirement accounts. Nothing.
(02:55) But what if you try to kill someone, but don’t succeed — and then your intended victim dies later of natural causes? Does the slayer statute still apply? Do you still get to inherit?
Today, we’re going to look at a real Michigan case that answers exactly that.
This one was decided by the Michigan Court of Appeals in January 2025. It’s a public opinion, but I’m going to stick to first names only. And just for transparency: I reviewed the published opinion itself, but I didn’t pull every underlying filing — the petitions, the motions, the full probate docket — so when I point out what someone might have argued, I’m basing it on the facts the Court included in the opinion and what typically shows up in these kinds of cases.
Before we get into the conflict, I’m going to give you the lay of the land.
(03:53) First, we have Donald. On November 29, 2017, he created a trust. At the start, the only people who could receive money from that trust were Donald and his wife, Elaine, who had been married since 1952. In trust language, they were the current beneficiaries — or, if we want to get technical, the permissible distributees of trust income and principal. Basically: during their lifetimes, the trust was for their benefit only and no one else’s.
And if you’re sitting there thinking, “I have no idea who my trust says is supposed to get what,” you’re not alone. That’s exactly why I created the Estate Plan Audit. It’s the simplest way to make sure your plan actually works the way you think it does. Check out deathreadiness.com/audit to learn more. The link is in the show notes.
(04:49) After both Donald and Elaine died, the trust would shift to the next group — the future or remainder beneficiaries. And those people are going to matter a lot in this story.
Now, here’s where things move quickly. Donald died on December 9, 2017 — less than two weeks after signing the trust. We don’t know his cause of death, but the timing suggests that he engaged in classic death-bed planning. His obituary said he passed peacefully at home, surrounded by his loving wife and son. When someone dies surrounded by family, the death is usually expected. And while death-bed planning isn’t inherently wrong, it can be rushed and done without everyone fully understanding what’s being signed or why. We’ll see pieces of that show up as the case unfolds.
Donald and Elaine had three children: Donnie, Debbie, and Larry. Sadly, Debbie and Larry died before Donald did, leaving Donnie as Elaine and Donald’s only surviving child.
(05:58) So what did Donald’s trust actually do?
When Donald died, Elaine became the sole current beneficiary, meaning the trust was now for her benefit alone. And when Elaine eventually died, their son Donnie was next in line to step into that same role as the sole person entitled to trust distributions during his lifetime.
By August 2018, Elaine and Donnie had decided that this trust Donald created just wasn’t working for them. So they filed a petition with the probate court asking to terminate the trust altogether. In plain English, they were likely arguing: “Just give us the money outright.”
(06:43) And remember, Donald signed this trust agreement on November 29, 2017, and died ten days later on December 9. When planning is done that close to death, it’s almost always rushed. And when planning is rushed, people don’t always understand exactly what they’re signing or the long-term consequences.
According to the Court of Appeals opinion, while Donald was still alive, and after he created the trust, “funds from two jointly held PNC accounts were transferred into the trust.”
This detail matters. If you have joint bank accounts, like my husband and I do, either person can legally take every dollar out of that account at any time, without permission from the other. It’s one of the risks of joint ownership.
But the opinion uses very passive language about the money, stating, the PNC bank accounts “were transferred.” This wording suggests that Donald didn’t transfer the money himself. And in Elaine’s petition, she argued exactly that. She claimed that Michael improperly transferred the PNC accounts into the trust for his own benefit.
(07:56) So who is Michael?
Michael was the original trustee of Donald’s trust. And based on the facts, I strongly suspect he was also acting as agent under Donald’s power of attorney. That would have given him legal authority to move the money from the joint accounts into the trust.
But here’s where the plot thickens: Michael wasn’t just the trustee. He was also a future beneficiary even though he was not a family member. After both Elaine and Donnie died, Michael was slated to inherit whatever remained in the trust.
You can see how this starts to feel messy.
And it didn’t take long for others to start getting uncomfortable. By March 2018, just a few months after Donald’s death, the probate court had already removed Michael as trustee.
(08:48) Now, that’s unusually fast. In most cases, it can take months just to get a hearing scheduled, let alone convince a judge to remove a trustee. So whatever concerns the family raised, they were serious enough to get the court’s attention right away.
Now let’s go back to why Elaine wanted this trust terminated, beyond her concerns about the PNC accounts being transferred into it.
Joint bank accounts and jointly owned real estate operate very differently. With a joint bank account, either person can empty it without the other’s consent. But with jointly owned real estate, both owners have to sign the deed to transfer it, unless someone is acting under a valid power of attorney.
According to the court’s opinion, Elaine met with Donald’s lawyer and signed deeds transferring their real estate into the trust. And when she later petitioned to terminate the trust, she argued that she didn’t understand what she was signing at the time and wanted that property transferred back to her personally.
(09:55) The trial court found that Elaine didn’t meet the burden of proving that either the real estate transfers or the transfer of the PNC funds should be undone. So her petition to return those assets was denied.
Then, in July 2021, Elaine and Donald’s only surviving child, Donnie, died.
About a year and a half later, on December 27, 2022, Elaine also died.
And at that point, with Donald, Elaine and Donnie gone, the only remaining beneficiary named in the trust was Michael.
Shortly after Elaine’s death, Michael petitioned the probate court to remove the then-acting trustee, terminate the trust, and distribute whatever was left directly to him.
(10:47) But here’s where things get interesting, and where the slayer statute comes into the picture. As a quick reminder, the slayer statute is the rule that says you cannot kill someone and then inherit from them.
Elaine’s niece, Rene, who had been acting as Elaine’s agent under a power of attorney, opposed Michael’s petition to terminate the trust. She argued the trust still needed court supervision. And her reason was a big one: Michael had been charged in a separate criminal proceeding with soliciting both Elaine and her son Donnie’s murder.
So now we have to ask: could Michigan’s slayer statute apply here?
Rene certainly thought so. She believed that Michael’s charge, solicitation of murder, might be enough to bar him from inheriting.
(11:42) Let’s pause and unpack this criminal charge for a moment.
A man named Daniel, who claimed to be Donald’s illegitimate son, said that Donald had intended for him to receive an inheritance. According to a local newspaper article, Daniel reached out to Elaine because he believed Donald had set aside $300,000 for him. Elaine then directed Daniel to Michael, because at that point Michael was the one effectively controlling Donald’s estate.
Now, we don’t know what Donald’s full estate plan looked like outside of this trust. But we do know that Daniel was not named anywhere in the trust we’re discussing today. And that matters, because a trust only governs the assets actually transferred into it. Here, based on the court’s opinion, that appears to include the PNC accounts and certain real estate — nothing indicating a $300,000 gift to Daniel.
(12:42) According to Daniel, during two phone conversations, Michael tried to recruit him to kill both Elaine and Donnie for a sum of $400,000.
Instead of going along with it, Daniel contacted the police.
And it’s important to underscore this: both Elaine and Donnie ultimately died of natural causes. There was no homicide.
But Daniel’s report to law enforcement is what led prosecutors to charge Michael with solicitation of murder.
Daniel died in mid-December 2022, before Elaine passed away. Just two months earlier, in October, he had testified via Zoom from his home in Macon, Georgia, during a preliminary hearing in the criminal case against Michael.
Once Daniel died, the state lost its key witness. With no one left to testify about the alleged solicitation, prosecutors dismissed the charges against Michael.
(13:44) So what does that mean for the trust Donald created?
To answer that, we need to take a closer look at Michigan’s slayer statute.
Michigan law says that anyone who “feloniously and intentionally kills” the decedent forfeits all benefits from the decedent’s estate. It also automatically revokes any inheritance or property gifts the killer would have received under a will or trust.
And just to close any loopholes, the statute adds a general principle: a killer cannot profit from their wrongdoing.
Now here’s an important point: You do not need a criminal conviction for the slayer statute to apply.
If someone has not been convicted, the probate court can still make its own determination, using a much lower evidentiary standard than in criminal court. Instead of the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard, the probate court judge uses the preponderance of the evidence standard, which basically means “more likely than not.”
(14:52) So if the probate court finds it more likely than not that a person would be found quote “criminally accountable” for feloniously and intentionally killing the decedent, that person is treated as the killer for purposes of the slayer statute.
Now let’s apply that to Michael.
Could a probate court find — more likely than not — that Michael could be found criminally accountable for feloniously and intentionally killing Elaine or Donnie?
Absolutely not.
And it’s a straightforward answer: neither Elaine nor Donnie were intentionally killed. They both died of natural causes.
Michigan’s slayer statute is very clear. It applies only to actual intentional killings. It does not extend to attempted murder. It does not extend to solicitation of murder. It does not extend to planning, plotting, conspiring, trying, or wishing. There must be an intentional killing — and here, there wasn’t one.
(16:04) So does Michael receive the remainder of Donald’s trust now that Elaine and Donnie are gone?
Yes. He does.
I don’t know if Daniel, the man who claimed to be Donald’s illegitimate son, was telling the truth.
I don’t know if Michael was a bad actor.
But I do know this: Michigan’s slayer statute doesn’t bar Michael from inheriting one cent from Donald’s trust, even if his behavior was questionable.
And that’s where this one lands. A trust in chaos, a questionable trustee, a murder-for-hire allegation and a slayer statute that simply didn’t apply.
(16:45) Cases like this are a reminder that estate law doesn’t just deal with money. It deals with people, their relationships, their motives, their blind spots, and the decisions they make under pressure. And sometimes, the law draws a line that surprises us.
If you’re a beneficiary, a trustee, or someone staring at a stack of legal documents wondering what any of it means, my Estate Plan Audit was built for exactly that. Think of it as a guided walkthrough of your plan — what works, what doesn’t, and what could blindside your family later. Most people don’t realize there are problems until a crisis hits. This is your chance to get ahead of it. Visit deathreadiness.com/audit to learn more. That’s deathreadiness.com/audit. The link is in the show notes.
Thanks for spending your time with me today.
(17:44) This is Death Readiness, real, messy and yours to own. I’m Jill Mastroianni and I’m here to help you sort through it, especially when you don’t know where to start.
Hi, I'm April, Jill's daughter. Thanks for listening to The Death Readiness Podcast. While my mom is an attorney, she’s not your attorney. The Death Readiness Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not provide legal advice. For legal guidance tailored to your unique situation, consult with a licensed attorney in your state. To learn more about the services my mom offers, visit DeathReadiness.com.