Explore the topic
Support children and adult inheritors with connection, autonomy, appropriate expectations and help that respects age, development and individual needs.
Preparing the next generation should mean more than preparing future owners. Children and adult family members have relationships, interests, vulnerabilities and ambitions that may not fit an inheritance plan. This section puts those people ahead of the roles a family imagines for them.
Parenting & next generation
Explore raising children with wealth through connection, age-appropriate money conversations and independence, without making family status their identity.
Parenting & next generation
Support adult children while respecting autonomy. Explore financial help, family expectations, boundaries and conversations about professional care.
It is written for parents, grandparents and adults reflecting on their own upbringing. We distinguish young children, adolescents and adults rather than assuming that one approach to independence works at every age. “Next generation” describes a family position, not a clinical or developmental category.
Our parenting guide explores attention, responsibilities, money conversations and room for mistakes. It does not prescribe manufactured hardship or suggest that withholding ordinary affection builds character. The question is how a child can be known as a person rather than treated primarily as a future representative of the family.
Children’s needs vary. NIMH advises seeking appropriate professional evaluation when concerns about a child’s emotions or behavior persist or interfere with daily life. Wealth and educational opportunity should not be used to explain away concerns, and normal differences should not automatically become diagnoses. [1]
An adult may welcome practical support while wanting privacy, a different career or a separate household. Another may need disability-related support or ongoing care. Respecting autonomy does not require pretending that every person has the same needs or resources.
The adult-child guide separates offers of help from control and discusses how to make expectations explicit. It also addresses parents’ own limits. Supporting somebody does not mean agreeing to every request, but a financial boundary should not be confused with ownership of their relationships or identity.
Ask what the person finds meaningful, what they want to understand and what support would be useful. Questions about education, work or inheritance can be discussed without making acceptance of a particular path the price of belonging.
For young adults exploring direction, visit identity and purpose. For a proposed role in the family enterprise, read succession and wellbeing. Where mental health care is being considered, choose appropriately qualified services and clarify age-specific consent, safeguarding and confidentiality rather than assuming the family payer decides everything.
1. National Institute of Mental Health: Children and Mental Health. Accessed 21 September 2026.