Inheritance and children: how to talk about wealth in the family

“Mum, are we rich?”

The question lands at dinner, between the soup and the main course. The twelve-year-old asks it without any particular intent — a classmate said something about their house and now she is curious. For a moment the table goes quiet. Her father looks at her mother, her mother looks at her plate. Then someone says: “That doesn’t matter. Eat up before it gets cold.”

The child carried on eating. But she took more away from that moment than she would have taken from any answer: that money is a subject nobody talks about in this house. That there is something dangerous or shameful in it. And that she will have to work out for herself what it means for her.

In this piece I want to write about why talking about inheritance is so hard in wealthy families, what happens when the conversation never takes place, and how you can begin it. I won’t be giving financial or legal advice — for wills, trusts, taxes and wealth management, the right people are a notary, a lawyer and a financial adviser. I will be writing about the part those professionals usually don’t cover: relationships, expectations and silence.

Why families stay silent about wealth

There are many reasons for silence, and almost all of them are understandable. Parents fear that if their children knew how much there was, they would lose their motivation. They fear the children would become spoilt, start comparing themselves with each other, or tell someone outside the family. Some feel that a conversation about inheritance is a conversation about their own death, and so they avoid it. Others grew up in families where money was never discussed, and simply don’t know how to begin.

There is one more reason, talked about less often: a conversation about wealth in a family is almost never just a conversation about wealth. Soon it opens up the questions of who contributed what, who was loved more, who stayed at home and who left, who married well and who married badly. In families, wealth often carries emotional accounts that people have kept for years without ever saying them aloud. Silence protects against those accounts being opened.

What is really passed on

The literature on passing wealth between generations often quotes the figure that about 70 per cent of family wealth transitions “fail” — that the wealth, or the unity of the family, has fallen apart by the second generation. The figure comes from a 2003 book by two advisers, Roy Williams and Vic Preisser. It should be read with caution: it is not a peer-reviewed study, and the methodology is not fully transparent. What is interesting, though, is what the authors blamed for most of these failures. Not poor investments or taxes, but a breakdown of trust and communication within the family, and heirs who had not been prepared to take over.

Even if we set the figure aside, the observation makes sense. Far more than wealth passes from generation to generation along with it. The story of how it was made is passed on — and what it cost. Values, expectations and unwritten rules about who may do what and who must do what are passed on. Old grudges are passed on too. I have written about everything we inherit besides genes in What I inherited besides genes: a family’s emotional legacy. The professional term for this is transgenerational transmission.

Silence is not neutral

Parents who stay silent about wealth often believe they are protecting their children. But children don’t live in a vacuum. They see the house, the holidays, the people who come to visit. They hear classmates’ remarks, read something in the paper, catch a fragment of their parents’ conversation. From these pieces they assemble their own story — and it is often more frightening or more mistaken than the truth.

The family therapist Evan Imber-Black, in her book on family secrets, describes how silence around a subject creates an atmosphere of its own. Children learn which questions they may not ask, and they carry that knowledge into other areas too. They don’t know exactly what is hidden — but they know that something is. I have written more about this in Family secrets and unfinished stories.

Silence about wealth also often gives rise to a family myth — a shared belief that nobody checks: “we are all equal here”, “the eldest will take over the business”, “we don’t talk about money because we’re not like that”. Myths can be comforting, but when the moment of inheritance arrives, it often turns out that each person understood them differently.

A 2008 finding by the researchers Marshall Duke, Amber Lazarus and Robyn Fivush is worth noting: children who knew more about their family’s history — where their grandparents grew up, what hardships the family had faced and how they got through them — had, on average, higher self-esteem and a stronger sense of control over their own lives. The study was not about wealth, but it points to something broader: knowing the family story, including its difficult parts, tends to strengthen children rather than threaten them.

When and how to talk — by age

There is no single right age for “the big conversation”. Rather than one conversation, what works better is a series of small ones that grow along with the child. The outline below is only a rough guide; every child and every family is different.

• Early childhood. Children don’t need figures yet. They need the experience that money is something that can be talked about, and that it is connected with work, care and sharing. To the question “are we rich?”, an honest, simple answer is better than silence: “We have more than we need, and we’re lucky. That’s why we also help others.”
• Adolescence. Teenagers notice the differences between themselves and their peers and often don’t know how to respond to them. The conversation can be about how to answer when someone asks, about privacy, and about the fact that the wealth is neither their merit nor their fault. Another important theme is that their worth does not depend on their surname — I have written about this in When you are seen only for what you have.
• Young adulthood. Young adults need enough information to plan their own lives, and a clear message about what the family expects of them — and what it doesn’t. This is where things most often get stuck: a young person doesn’t know whether they may choose a career they love, or whether they are expected to take over the family business.
• Adulthood. Once the children are adults, it is time for a more open conversation about plans, roles and division — ideally with professionals alongside who cover the legal and financial side.

Fairness between children: equal isn’t always fair

One of the hardest questions parents face is how to be fair to all their children. At first glance the answer is simple: the same for each. But in families it soon becomes clear that equal is not always experienced as fair. One stayed at home and cared for the parents, another moved abroad. One has worked in the family business for years, another was never interested in it. One has children, another doesn’t. One has already received help in the past, another hasn’t.

Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, one of the founders of family therapy, described in his book Invisible Loyalties how families keep a kind of invisible ledger of merits and debts. Each member unconsciously records what they have given and what they have received, and this ledger is passed from generation to generation. When an inheritance comes, the ledger is often opened — and the division of wealth becomes a verdict on whose story was the right one.

Research by Jill Suitor, Karl Pillemer and colleagues shows that adult children are very attentive to whether their parents treat them differently — and that perceived favouritism is linked with tension between siblings well into adulthood, whether or not it was intended. I have written about how alliances form between brothers and sisters in Siblings, alliances and coalitions.

It doesn’t follow that there is one right division. But something else does follow: the explanation often matters more than the division. A child who understands why their parents decided as they did, and who had a chance to say their piece, will accept an unequal division more easily than an equal one that nobody ever talked about. The most painful decisions are the ones children first learn about from a will.

When the conversation gets stuck

A conversation about inheritance often gets stuck in places that have little to do with money. This is how it might sound (a composite, not a real person):

“I only wanted to tell you how your mother and I have arranged things.”
“Yes. And what I heard is that Jure is getting the business.”
“Because he has worked in it for fifteen years.”
“I know. But I’m the one who drove Mum to the doctor every week.”
Silence.
“I didn’t know that meant so much to you.”
“It’s not about the business, Dad. It’s about someone noticing.”

This short exchange shows something that often holds true in families: behind the question of division stands the question of recognition. The daughter isn’t demanding a share; she is asking for her contribution to be seen. Once that has been said, the conversation about wealth can continue differently.

Things also often get stuck because triangulation creeps in: one parent talks to one child about another, the children talk among themselves about the parents, the children’s partners add their own views. The more conversations there are “about” someone and the fewer “with” them, the more tension builds up.

Heirs’ expectations and identity

For children from wealthy families, an inheritance is not only a future event. It has been part of their identity since childhood. Many describe a feeling that their choices are judged in advance through the family’s wealth: if they succeed, it’s “because of the family”; if they don’t, they are “spoilt”. Some therefore find it hard to choose their own path, while others distance themselves from the family to prove they can manage on their own.

In her research on adolescents from affluent communities, Suniya Luthar warned that these young people may be at higher risk of certain difficulties than one might expect — linking this to achievement pressure and to parents’ emotional absence. I have written more about this in Children in abundance. For the conversation about inheritance, one thing matters above all: children need to hear that their worth in the family does not depend on whether they will one day manage the wealth well.

With adult children the question is even more delicate. The relationship between parents and adult children is often being renegotiated, and an inheritance can weigh it down — or, if it is talked about openly, deepen it. More on this in Adult children and parents: can the relationship still be repaired?

Where this doesn’t apply — and where the limits are

This piece is no substitute for wealth professionals. Questions about wills, forced heirship shares, trusts, taxes and the transfer of businesses are legal and financial. For those, turn to a notary, a lawyer and a financial adviser. A family conversation doesn’t replace them; it creates the conditions in which their solutions will be accepted.

Openness is not always the first answer. In some families the circumstances are such that full openness would do harm — for example, when one of the children is in serious difficulty with addiction, when there is violence in the family, or when someone outside the family would misuse the information. In such cases it is right for parents first to consult professionals about what to tell, and to whom.

A conversation doesn’t resolve every conflict. Some grudges are older than the wealth and merely surface around it. A conversation won’t erase them, but it can put them on the table, where they can be seen and perhaps begin to be worked through — instead of erupting only after the parents’ death, when nothing can be explained any more.

And you don’t have to do everything at once. Some parents don’t start the conversation because they think they must have everything settled and every answer ready. That isn’t true. An honest “we’re still thinking about this and we want to hear from you too” is often a better beginning than a final decision.

An exercise: preparing for the first conversation

This exercise is for parents before they talk about inheritance for the first time with their adult or nearly adult children. Give yourself an hour, some paper and, if possible, your partner.

1. Write down what you want your children to know. Not figures, but messages: what the wealth means to you, how it was made, what you hope will happen with it, and what you expect of them — and what you don’t.
2. Write down what you are afraid of. That they’ll fall out? That they’ll stop working? That they’ll start seeing you differently? Fears that are written down steer the conversation less than those that aren’t.
3. For each child separately, ask yourself: what do they think they know? What might they have learned from the silence? What could hurt them?
4. Prepare your first sentence — and make it not about the division, but about why you want to talk. For example: “I don’t want you to find out about this one day from papers, but from me.”
5. Plan to listen more than you speak. After the first conversation, write down what you heard that was new. Agree on the next one.

The exercise doesn’t guarantee that the conversation will be easy. But it does ensure that you go into it with what matters to you, not only with what you fear.

Where you can find support

A conversation about inheritance can also be a chance for a family to look at its story as a whole for the first time: how the wealth was made, who gave what to it, which rules were handed down and which stories were never told. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we say that every family repeats patterns nobody chose — and that they can only be changed once we see them. I have written about how a change in one member affects everyone in The family as a system.

One tool that helps with this is the genogram — a family tree that records not only names and dates but also relationships, roles and recurring stories. In a longer, 90-minute session, A Look into the Past, we draw it together and look at what is handed down in your family from generation to generation. For some parents this is a good first step before they begin the conversation with their children. I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana.

To return to the opening scene: the question “are we rich?” is not dangerous. What is dangerous is the sense that it may not be talked about. A child who gets an honest answer learns that questions are welcome in their family. And that may be the most valuable thing you can leave them.

What to remember

• A conversation about inheritance is almost never only about wealth — it also holds recognition, fairness and old stories.
• Silence is not neutral: children piece together their own story from fragments, and it is often more frightening than the truth.
• Rather than one big conversation, small conversations suited to the child’s age work better.
• Equal isn’t always experienced as fair; the explanation often matters more than the division.
• Leave the legal and financial side to a notary, a lawyer and a financial adviser — the relationships stay with the family.