What Is the Great Wealth Transfer? 

Over the coming decades, Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation are expected to pass roughly $124 trillion in assets to Gen X, Millennials, and charitable causes—an event commonly known as the Great Wealth Transfer.  

For ultra-high-net-worth families, the Great Wealth Transfer raises a few challenging questions, including:  

• Is the next generation ready to steward what previous generations have built?  

• How can a family pass on not just wealth, but also the judgment, values, and shared purpose that gave that wealth meaning in the first place? 

The nature of these questions calls for families to hold honest conversations across generations about succession, governance, and a shared vision.  

Why Does the Great Wealth Transfer Matter to UHNW Families? 

For UHNW families transferring significant wealth, the complexity of family assets—and the weight of these responsibilities—require a comprehensive approach to areas such as succession, governance, and wealth stewardship.  

Families managing operating businesses, private equity positions, international real estate, and philanthropic entities like private foundations aren’t just passing down money to the next generation. They’re transferring a web of responsibilities: stewarding the family capital, meeting philanthropic commitments, and making decisions for generations not yet born.  

The chances are not very good for successful multi-generational family offices. Typically, 30% of family offices survive the second generation. About 10% of the time, wealth transfers to the next generation.  

Why does this happen? Typically, it’s a lack of excellence across different things. Investing is one, but probably more important are family governance and family unity. 

— Jeff Hays, TIGER 21 Chair 

Successful multi-generational wealth transfer can also test whether a family can function as a unit under pressure. 

How Much Wealth Is Expected to Transfer Across Generations? 

According to Cerulli Associates, roughly $124 trillion in assets is expected to change hands across generations in the United States alone over the next 25 years. Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation will account for most of it, passing wealth to Gen X, Millennials, and philanthropic causes at a scale with no historical precedent. This massive transfer of wealth will likely create a shift in how wealth is distributed, managed, and given meaning across generations.  

For UHNW families, it can also act as a reminder that delay can come with a cost. Families that start early—structuring governance, educating heirs, and aligning around shared values—are far better positioned to navigate wealth transfer and succession while minimizing conflict and capital erosion. 

What Makes Generational Wealth Transfer More Complex for UHNW Families? 

The sheer size of certain families’ wealth—coupled with operating businesses, complexity of assets and ownership, differences in readiness or values—can create complexities for ultra-wealthy families. 

Additionally, complexity compounds as families grow. Consider a single wealth creator who has several children, each with a different relationship to the family enterprise, a different level of financial sophistication, and different expectations for how the family wealth should be used. Add a second generation of spouses and a third generation of grandchildren with their own priorities, and areas like decision-making and governance become even more challenging. 

The risk, as noted by TIGER 21 Chair Christopher Rose, is fragmentation:

The reason why families lose their wealth isn’t because of poor investments. It’s because of divisions in the family. 

— Christopher Rose, TIGER 21 Chair 

Stewarding multi-generational wealth requires shared decision-making. Without a framework, individual interests pull in competing directions, straining both relationships and long-term viability of the family operations. 

Transferring the judgment, values, and sense of responsibility to steward that capital is a significant undertaking, and one that families may underestimate until they are already in the middle of it. 

How Can Families Prepare for the Great Wealth Transfer? 

TIGER 21 Chair Jeff Hays suggests that preparing for the Great Wealth Transfer starts with families defining their intentions for their wealth. 

When you have $500 million and it starts passing down generationally, people need to know what your intentions were for that money.  

Was it for lifestyle so that I can buy a nice boat and a Ferrari and live in a huge house? Was it for entrepreneurial ventures so that I could take loans from the family bank so that we continue to compound the assets? Is it for philanthropy?  

As people intersect with this money in the second, third generation and beyond, what’s the money for? 

— Jeff Hays, TIGER 21 Chair 

Preparing to transfer significant wealth across generations is not a single event, but, rather, an ongoing process. This process could include legal and financial structuring, setting up regular channels for family communication like a family meeting, educating the Next Generation, and creating governance frameworks that guide decisions across generations. 

Treating wealth transfer as a purely technical exercise leaves out several of the elements key to family unity. A well-drafted trust cannot replace a family that knows how to talk honestly about money, purpose, and responsibility.  

Families that successfully create multi-generational wealth tend to share a few habits: 

A family constitution is a governance document that captures a family’s shared values, expectations, decision-making principles, and communication guidelines. During a transfer, it serves as a reference point for continuity, holding steady across leadership changes, generational shifts, and stretches of disagreement. 

A family constitution can make explicit what would otherwise be assumed: what the family stands for, how it decides together, who holds authority in which domains, and how future members are expected to engage with shared wealth and responsibility. 

The process of writing a family constitution can be as valuable as the document itself. When families work through questions together, across generations and branches, they bring assumptions to light and build ta shared understanding that makes governance real, rather than theoretical. 

This clarity of purpose can keep families aligned across generations, even as individual family members pursue different paths and the world around them changes. 

What Challenges Can Families Face During the Transfer of Wealth? 

As the TIGER 21 community often discuss, the common challenges associated with wealth transfer are rarely purely financial. They often involve the complexities surrounding family dynamics, such as: 

• Unclear expectations for the next generation and their role in stewarding family wealth. 
• Little to no family communication until issues become urgent. 
• Differences in values across generations that create differing opinions about how family wealth should be used. 
• Conflict over roles, including struggles in which founding generations are reluctant to give up control. 
• Lack of clarity around succession and responsibility. 

The human dimensions of wealth transfer can be more challenging than the finances, especially when they’re left unexamined.  

Additionally, heirs who are unprepared for the emotional and social realities of significant wealth face a different challenge than those who simply lack financial knowledge. A large inheritance can change relationships, expectations, and self-perception. Families that acknowledge this and build it into their preparation set themselves up to move through wealth transition with greater family cohesion. 

To set the foundation for a smoother transfer of wealth across generations, best practices include establishing regular channels for honest dialogue across generations and involving Next Gen family members in smaller decisions to build leadership skills. 

What Does the Great Wealth Transfer Mean Beyond Money? 

The Great Wealth Transfer has the potential to hand down something more significant than money to the next generation: the family’s identity, its sense of responsibility, and its reasons for building wealth in the first place.  

Wealth represents more than just a number on a balance sheet. It reflects the choices, sacrifices, and values behind it. It can also reflect the values a family stands for. When wealth passes to next generation family members, they get to decide whether that meaning changes or stays the same. 

Why UHNW Families Navigating Wealth Transfer Turn to TIGER 21 

Navigating succession and multi-generational wealth transfer is an ongoing process that touches financial planning, family relationships, governance structures, and questions of legacy and family values. The TIGER 21 community creates a candid space for entrepreneurs, investors, and single family office principals to share perspectives and insights in these arenas, among others.  

Preparing heirs, establishing family communication channels, and defining a legacy are all topics Members discuss within the confidential Meeting environment. Many Members come to see their Group as a personal board of advisors for candid discussions around wealth creation and preservation, family, legacy and philanthropy. 

To learn more about what TIGER 21 Membership could mean for your family’s legacy, explore Membership in a local Group, virtual Group, or a Family Office Group. 

Frequently Asked Questions 

Is the Great Wealth Transfer Already Happening? 

The Great Wealth Transfer is already underway. Baby Boomers began reaching peak inheritance ages in the 2010s and transfers are accelerating as the generation ages. According to Cerulli Associates, most of the estimated $124 trillion is expected to move over the next two to three decades. 

Why Is the Great Wealth Transfer Important for Families? 

Acknowledging the upcoming transfer can help families become more proactive about planning for a smooth transfer of assets, while minimizing family conflict. By discussing key decisions, preparing heirs, and establishing family values, families will be better prepared for the Great Wealth Transfer.  

How Does the Great Wealth Transfer Affect Philanthropy? 

A significant share of transferred wealth is expected to flow to charitable causes. As families discuss succession planning, they may discover that younger family members hold different philanthropic priorities. Creating room for open dialogue can offer rising generations the opportunity to get their voices heard as families set future philanthropic priorities. 

What Is the Difference Between Wealth Transfer and Generational Wealth Transfer? 

Wealth transfer refers broadly to the movement of assets from one person or entity to another, including gifts, sales, or bequests. Generational wealth transfer describes the passage of assets across generations and usually involves long-term planning for continuity and stewardship. 

How Can Families Prepare Heirs for Inherited Wealth? 

Solid preparation for inheriting significant wealth goes well beyond financial education. Families benefit from early, honest conversations about values and purpose. Families also might also consider structured opportunities for rising-generation members to engage with family assets and governance frameworks that give heirs clear roles and responsibilities before they are expected to lead.