$124 Trillion Is Changing Hands — and Heirs Aren't Ready

$124 trillion will pass between generations in the U.S. through 2048, according to Cerulli Associates — and much of it will land with heirs who have never been told what is coming or how to handle it.

Jessica McGawley, a consultant who has worked with high-net-worth families for nearly two decades, told Fortune that wealthy parents routinely freeze when their children ask a blunt question after noticing the family owns more than one house: "Are we rich?" Her job, she said, starts with explaining that the children are not "being greedy or rude."

"How a parent feels comfortable talking about sex and death is also how they feel comfortable with money," McGawley said.

She founded her firm Dallington to close that gap after repeatedly seeing parents produce "a watertight paper document that explains everything" — and never actually talk it through 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."

What the numbers say about the silence?

A Fidelity study last year found the majority of parents age 55 or older with at least $500,000 in investable assets have not discussed inheritance with their children:

• 52% have not communicated their net worth.
• 68% have not told their kids what they will inherit — or whether they will inherit at all.
• 35% said they do not want their children to know how much they will get.

A separate 2026 Fidelity 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, found parents who share completed plans are more than three times as likely to feel confident in their planning. Only 21% have communicated a completed estate plan to their adult children.

Why do parents stay silent?

McGawley has worked with more than 150 ultra high net worth individuals, most of them centimillionaires. The dominant fear, she said, is entitlement.

"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.

What changes things, she argued, is heirs learning the upsides and downsides of their wealth and building an identity beyond it.

What happens when they don't tell?

Children of the ultra-rich often learn the scale of their family's wealth from outsiders — before they are ready — and the shock can strain family relationships long term, McGawley said.

She described the teenage daughter of a billionaire family who did not grasp her family's net worth until college, when new friends looked her up online. Half asked her to buy them things or arrange internships at her father's company; 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."

The stakes rise with succession. Parents who pick one sibling to run the business can leave another feeling disinherited; those who refuse to hand over control at all risk fracturing the family. Philanthropy, McGawley added, is "a real hotbed for conflict": parents may have backed the same children's charity or water aid group for 20 years while their kids want to fund causes like women's rights that feel more pertinent to their generation.

The confidence gap is widening. Only 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.

"If they are just being handed roles, you're going to have problems," McGawley said of heirs. "Money is very emotional."

Does openness work?

David Munson, 67, is proof it can. A fourth-generation heir of a Texas family's stock and oil fortune, he told Fortune his father discussed finances openly — but also made the children sell eggs to neighbors to earn their own money. The father, a stockbroker in the 1960s who later sold oil and gas leases in western Colorado won in the federal government's lease lottery, 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.

Today, Munson's four adult children each receive $10,000 a month from their trusts, letting them pursue passions without depending on a paycheck. As the Great Wealth Transfer accelerates through 2048, families that treat money as a topic of conversation rather than a sealed document are the ones positioned to keep it — and each other.