Should you give your children’s inheritance to charity?

Fears of misspent money, bad investments and creating spoiled offspring are causing high-net-worth parents to leave their money to causes other than their own children.

Inheritance being discussed around the table by a family
Should you give your children’s inheritance to charity?
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Three quarters of multi-millionnaire parents are worried large inheritances will be bad for their children, so are instead donating large chunks to charity, according to new research.

A study of high-net-worth (HNW) parents with average wealth of more than £3 million in total assets found three out of four believe leaving too big an inheritance can be a curse on their children’s lives.

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Laura Miller

Laura Miller is an experienced financial and business journalist. Formerly on staff at the Daily Telegraph, her freelance work now appears in the money pages of all the national newspapers. She endeavours to make money issues easy to understand for everyone, and to do justice to the people who regularly trust her to tell their stories. She lives by the sea in Aberystwyth. You can find her tweeting @thatlaurawrites