What Do I Tell My Children About Their Inheritances?

For some parents, it can be difficult to discuss family wealth and inheritances with their children. You may worry that when your kid learns they’re going to inherit a chunk of money, they’ll drop out of college and devote all their time to their tan.

Kiplinger’s recent article, “To Prepare Your Heirs for Future Wealth, Don’t Hide the Truth,” says that some parents have lived through many obstacles themselves. Therefore, they may try to find a middle road between keeping their children in the dark about their inheritances and telling them too early and without the proper planning. However, this is missing one critical element, which is the role their children want to play in managing their inheritances creating their own futures.

In addition to the finer points of estate planning and tax planning, another crucial part of successfully transferring wealth is honest communication between parents and their children. This can be valuable on many levels, including having heirs see the family vision and bolstering personal relationships between parents and children through trust, honesty and vulnerability.

For example, if the parents had inherited a $25 million estate and their children would be the primary beneficiaries, transparency would be of the utmost importance. That can create some expectations of money to burn for the kids. However, that might not be the case, if the parents worked with an experienced estate planning attorney to lessen estate taxes for a more successful transfer of wealth.

Without having conversations with parents about the family’s wealth and how it will be distributed, the support a child gets now and what she may receive in the future, may be far different than what she originally thought. With information about inheritances, the child could make informed decisions about her future education and how she would live.

Heirs can have a wide variety of motivations to understand their family’s wealth and what they stand to expect as an inheritance. However, most concern planning for their future. As a child matures and begins to assume greater responsibility, parents should identify opportunities to keep them informed and to learn about their children’s aspirations, and what they want to accomplish.

The best way to find out about an heir’s motivation, is simply to talk to them about it.

Learn how to lessen the chances your children will fight over their inheritances.

Reference: Kiplinger (May 22, 2019) “To Prepare Your Heirs for Future Wealth, Don’t Hide the Truth”