It’s time to rethink California’s tragically ineffective conservatorship laws

Flowers surround Rob Reiner’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday, December 15, 2025. Rob and Michelle Singer Reiner’s bodies were found in their home in Brentwood on Sunday. The Los Angeles police have arrested Nick Reiner, the son of Rob and Michele Singer Reiner in connection with the deaths. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

By Megan Cole

Just two days after Rob and Michele Reiner were found fatally stabbed inside their Brentwood home last weekend, their 32-year-old son, Nick—who has struggled with

Addiction and intermittent homelessness for over half of his life, and who had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia—was  charged with his parents’ murder. 

In  the wake of the tragedy, many have wondered: why couldn’t anyone force Nick to seek substantial support before it was too late? And if the Reiners could not help their son, what hope is there for the families of the other 1.2 million Californians living with a serious mental illness? 

Six years ago, my own family suffered the consequences  of a decades-old California law that—to this day—makes it nearly impossible to involuntarily hospitalize a loved one in crisis. During the last decade of her life, my aunt, Amy, had struggled with addiction and alcoholism in addition to severe mental health  issues. She cycled through myriad rehabilitation facilities, endured a half-dozen 5150 holds—72-hour involuntary psychiatric commitments named for the section of the California code that introduced them—and shuffled in and out of jails. Near the end of her  life, Amy was living in her car and refusing medication or hospitalization for her schizoaffective disorder. 
    
On Christmas Eve 2019, for reasons unknown to anyone but Amy, she rented an SUV and drove it across the southern border.  Two weeks later, her body was found in the back of her rental car in Hermosillo, Mexico. Her brutal murder remains unsolved to this day. 

In the last years of Amy’s life, there was almost nothing our family could do to help her, due in large part to California’s strict conservatorship laws. Conservatorships allow an appointed third-party individual to make decisions for an adult conservatee—usually their family member—who is gravely incapacitated by mental illness, alcoholism, or addiction. 

In 1967, California passed the Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act, which stated that a mentally ill person could not be involuntarily committed or otherwise “conserved” unless she posed an imminent threat to herself or others. Other kinds of conservatorships (for those who struggle with alcoholism or addiction but have not been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, for example) have similar constraints. 

The glaring problem in the cases of Nick Reiner and Amy—and tens of thousands of other struggling Californians—is that families often cannot secure conservatorships for their loved ones until the worst has already come to pass. 

The LPS act “is attributed by various people as having transformed Californian society in many, many ways,” says Jonathan Simon, Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law at the University of California, Berkeley. “Today we attribute many of our most persistent evils in this state to having gotten this law either wrong or not right enough – and that includes unhousedness, that includes rampant public drug use and drug sales in the center of many of our large cities, it includes mass incarceration,” and so on.  

Recently, celebrities like Britney Spears and Wendy Williams have brought the issue of conservatorships to national attention; their controversial conservators have received backlash for allegedly leveraging their positions to abuse their conservatees and benefit financially from the management of their estates. However, scholars and activists have argued that Spears’ and Williams’ cases are exceptions to the rule. 

“In nearly all cases, the [conservatee] is indigent, and there is no potential financial gain to the family,” said Jill Escher, president of the National Council on Severe Autism. “To the contrary, the conservatorship imposes on conservators many affirmative duties, responsibilities, and burdens, with no potential tangible gain apart from the knowledge that they can use their legal authority to advance the well-being of their loved one.” 

In most cases, conservatorships are difficult to manage, and even more difficult to acquire.

A 2020 report by California’s state auditor found evidence that in Los Angeles County, nearly ten thousand people had been placed on at least 10 holds in their lifetime—however, only about 1 in 16 of these temporary holds resulted in a conservatorship. According to the most recent statistics from the Department of Health Care Services, fewer than 1,500 Californians are on LPS conservatorships. 

There is evidence, though, that when conservatorships are granted, they are largely effective. In one California study of 35 patients placed under conservatorships, “29 (83 percent) remained stable as long as the conservatorship lasted, but for the 21 patients whose conservatorship was terminated, only 9 (43 percent) remained stable after termination.” 

In an effort to lower barriers for those seeking conservatorships, in 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed the CARE Act.

The act would allow Californians to request intervention by “CARE Court” on behalf of family members with severe mental illnesses and/or substance use disorders. The legislature approved it with bipartisan, near-unanimous support. 

However, when CARE Court was introduced statewide last year, it hardly lived up to its potential. Eligibility for participation had narrowed, covering only people with severe psychosis and not those with substance abuse issues. The petition process had become much more unwieldy than the one originally proposed. Since the launch of CARE Court, the state has mandated treatment of a mentally ill person in only a handful of cases, and has not fined counties that have failed to provide court-ordered services to participants.

In another effort to modernize conservatorship proceedings in California, Gov. Newsom signed a law in 2023 updating the LPS Act for the first time in over 50 years.

The new law expands eligibility for conservatorship to anyone unable to secure their personal safety due to either substance use or mental health issues. Now, conservatorship laws “[encompass] people with a severe substance use disorder, such as chronic alcoholism, and no longer [require] a co-occurring mental health disorder.” Like the CARE Act, this law took effect last year but counties  can postpone its implementation until 2026. 

Of course, Californians with mental illnesses and substance use disorders should retain their agency and autonomy to the fullest possible extent. Conservatorships and involuntary treatments should be temporary measures of last resort. Still, I hope that California lawmakers will consider amending conservatorship laws so that after all other avenues have been exhausted, families might have the option to secure help for their incapacitated loved ones before they become agents or victims of tragedy.    

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It’s time to rethink California’s tragically ineffective conservatorship laws