‘Are we rich?’ The question billionaire and millionaire parents dread, and what happens when they dodge it
· Fortune
There’s a question wealthy parents dread, and it’s not coming from activists asking them about their tax returns.
Jessica McGawley, a consultant who’s worked with high-net-worth families for nearly two decades, told Fortune that she has to explain to clients that their children are not “being greedy or rude” by suddenly asking “Are we rich?” after noticing their family has more than one house.
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“How a parent feels comfortable talking about sex and death is also how they feel comfortable with money,” she said.
As the scions of wealthy families anticipate the $124 trillion Great Wealth Transfer—the sum Cerulli Associates projects will change hands in the U.S. through 2048—they’re often unprepared to handle their inheritance because their families haven’t talked with them about money and how to manage it. McGawley founded her firm Dallington to address this issue, based on her experience of parents having put together “a watertight paper document that explains everything” but failing to actually talk through it with their kids.
“Successful families are very good at preparing wealth for the children. They are not good at preparing the children for the wealth,” McGawley said. “So if you spend all this time and all this energy preparing your wealth for your children, but don’t prepare them for what they’re receiving and why, you’ve missed the point.”
A Fidelity study last year found the majority of parents age 55 or older with at least $500,000 in investable assets haven’t talked to their kids about inheriting money, with more than half (52%) reporting they haven’t communicated their net worth and 68% reporting they haven’t told their kids what they’ll inherit or if they’ll inherit at all. About a third (35%) said they don’t want their children to know how much they’ll get.
But parents who share completed plans with their kids are more than three times as likely to feel confident in their planning, Fidelity separately found in a 2026 survey of 654 married or partnered adults age 55 or older with a net worth of at least $500,000 and at least one adult child. But only 21% have communicated a completed estate plan to their adult children.
Reasons why they don’t
McGawley has worked with more than 150 ultra high net worth individuals, with most of her clients falling into the centimillionaire bucket. She said mostparents worry that letting their kids know the extent of their wealth will make them entitled.
“There’s this fear that if your kids know how much money that you have as a family, that they’re going to basically give up studying, give up motivation, won’t be bothered—basically have a meal ticket for the rest of their life,” she said.
She said what “changes things” is heirs learning the upsides and downsides that accompany their wealth and how to build an identity outside of inheriting it.
What happens when they don’t
When the ultra-rich avoid telling their kids how much they’re worth, the kids may find out from outsiders before they’re ready, and the shock can strain family relationships over the long term, according to McGawley.
The teenage daughter of a billionaire family McGawley worked with didn’t know the scale of her wealth until she started college, when her new friends looked her up online and found out her family’s net worth. Half of them asked her to buy them things or to get internships at her dad’s company, and the other half criticized her for “not donating all of her inheritance to Gaza.”
“There’s been no preparation time, and then she’s met with these extreme responses to her wealth, which she hasn’t really even understood,” McGawley said. “So really, what you find is somebody wanting to just stick their head in the sand and shut their door.”
But there can also be more serious consequences, especially when parents don’t involve their kids in succession talks early on. They might pick one sibling to take over the business and leave another feeling disinherited, or refuse to hand over control of the business at all, fracturing family relationships.
“If they are just being handed roles, you’re going to have problems,” McGawley said about heirs. “Money is very emotional.”
She said philanthropy can be “a real hotbed for conflict” because the parents might have donated to the same children’s charity or water aid group for 20 years, but their kids want to donate to one “that feels more pertinent at the age that they’re at,” like a women’s rights group. Fewer than half (47%) of Americans with at least $3 million in investable assets surveyed by Bank of America believe the next generation is ready to take on family philanthropic causes, down from 55% in 2024.
“This idea that we can’t survive differences within family needs to be addressed because if you’re going to be a family that works together, inherits together, you need to be able to make decisions together, and you need to be able to manage difficult conversations,” McGawley said.
But when rich parents do talk to their kids about money and its responsibilities, it can turn out well. David Munson, 67, is a fourth-generation heir of his Texas family’s stock and oil wealth and told Fortune his father talked openly about finances—but also made the kids sell eggs to the neighbors to earn their own money. His father worked as a stockbroker in the 1960s and in the 1970s sold oil and gas leases in western Colorado that he won in the federal government’s lease lottery. He eventually left “several hundred million dollars” to Munson and his siblings.
“He taught us to be sensible and productive, and also think about passing down wealth to our kids,” Munson said.
Munson said that today, his four adult children each get $10,000 a month from their trusts, which lets them pursue their passions without worrying about working.
“It’s important for parents to both talk to their kids about money, but also encourage them to get some work experience, but not expect them to live a poor life growing up,” Munson said. “There can be a lot of blessings to a kid having enough wealth to do things they want to do instead of having to get a job just because they need the money.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com