Many families focus on building wealth, but fewer think about keeping it. Research shows that a majority of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and by the third generation, the number climbs as high as 90%. This often happens not because parents lack concern for their kids, but because crucial planning elements are overlooked.
Keeping wealth in your family isn’t just about signing legal documents or having a strong investment portfolio. True wealth preservation requires a thoughtful approach to inheritance, practical systems that ensure your assets remain accessible, and education that prepares the next generation to be responsible stewards.
In this article, you’ll discover three essential elements for building and preserving generational wealth: the mindset shifts that redefine what inheritance truly means, the legal and financial strategies that prevent assets from slipping through the cracks, and the education process that equips your children to manage and grow what you’ve worked so hard to build. Most importantly, you’ll see why families who successfully pass down wealth think differently about what they’re actually leaving behind.
The Mindset Shift: From “My Wealth” to “Our Legacy”
Families who successfully maintain prosperity over multiple generations understand something critical: wealth is more than just money. While you can certainly leave your children a million dollars, if they don’t understand responsibility, financial management, or your family’s values, that money may not last.
Generational wealth endures when you pass on both tangible and intangible assets—not only accounts and property, but also the knowledge, traditions, and life lessons that make financial wealth sustainable. Your experiences, values, and even your failures are all part of the inheritance that will shape how your children handle what you leave them.
This requires a mindset shift: inheritance isn’t a one-time transfer that happens at death. It’s an ongoing process of preparation during your lifetime. Instead of keeping financial matters completely private, we encourage you to invite your children into age-appropriate conversations about your values, your goals, and the responsibilities they may inherit one day.
Think of it like teaching your child to drive. You wouldn’t simply hand over the keys without practice and guidance. Likewise, it’s important not to hand over wealth without providing the training and perspective they need to manage it wisely.
Of course, perspective alone isn’t enough. Once you embrace this broader definition of wealth, you’ll need systems that ensure your financial assets are actually protected and available when the time comes.
The Practical Side: Legal and Financial Strategies That Work
Many people, even those with substantial assets, mistakenly believe that estate planning is solely about creating a set of documents. However, documents alone are often insufficient. A document like a will, trust, power of attorney, or healthcare directive cannot convey all that is important to you, and it doesn’t fully address the direct impact on your loved ones once you pass away or become incapacitated. The truth is, a document alone can sometimes create more problems than it solves—leading to months of probate, thousands in legal fees, and painful family conflict during an already emotional time.
That’s why our Life & Legacy Planning® process goes further. Protecting wealth and passing it on requires much more than a set of documents that can become outdated over time. True wealth protection encompasses several key aspects, such as:
Comprehensive Asset Organization
Your plan begins with a complete inventory of everything you own—bank accounts, investments, real estate, insurance policies, digital assets, business interests, and personal items of value. Each asset is correctly titled and integrated into your overall plan so nothing is lost or overlooked, ensuring it can be passed on to the people you love.
A Plan That Stays Up to Date
Life doesn’t stand still, and your plan shouldn’t either. Marriages, divorces, births, deaths, and property changes all require updates to ensure your plan continues to reflect your current life and wishes. Through regular reviews, we help ensure your plan stays current so it works exactly as intended when your family needs it most.
Clarity for the People You Love
A Life & Legacy Plan doesn’t just protect your assets—it protects the people you love from uncertainty. Your family receives clear guidance about what you own, how to find it, and what to do when the time comes. We help you document where accounts are held, how to access them, and who to contact for help. This clarity prevents the confusion and conflict that too often arise when families are left searching for answers.
Ongoing Guidance and a Trusted Relationship
Legal strategies form the foundation of wealth preservation, but they’re only one part of the equation. Our role as your Personal Family Lawyer® is to serve as your trusted advisor for life—someone who understands your family, your values, and your goals, and who will be there to guide your loved ones when you no longer can. And if we’re not able to be there, we’ll ensure a trusted colleague is available to provide the same level of support. That ongoing relationship ensures your plan works not just legally, but practically and emotionally, for the people you care about most.
Creating a comprehensive plan and keeping it updated over time is only one part of preserving generational wealth. For true generational wealth to last, your children also need the tools, guidance, and values to use it wisely.
The Education Piece: Preparing the Next Generation
Even the most thoughtfully crafted estate plan can’t fully prepare your family to carry your intentions forward. Real success requires education, open communication, and active participation, so your loved ones understand not only what you decided, but why.
That’s why we encourage families to treat planning as an ongoing conversation, not a one-time event. When your family understands your decisions in advance—such as why you chose certain beneficiaries, appointed specific roles, or structured inheritances a particular way—they’re far less likely to experience confusion or conflict later. These conversations also provide a valuable opportunity to share your values, priorities, and hopes for how your wealth will be used to strengthen relationships, not divide them.
If you are a member of our FamilyCare Program, we will facilitate family meetings where we review your plan together. In these meetings, we explain how your plan works and what responsibilities each person may hold. It also gives them the opportunity to ask questions while you’re there to answer them, preventing misunderstandings later. Having everyone in the same room, literally or virtually, builds understanding and unity, ensuring that your family has a clear roadmap and a trusted advisor they can turn to when the time comes.
When you work with us, you’ll also record a Life & Legacy Interview, where you’ll share your stories, values, instructions for your loved ones, and your reasons for the choices you’ve made. Combined with periodic family meetings and regular plan updates, this approach ensures that your loved ones are never left wondering what you wanted, or why.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t just to pass on assets, but to create a foundation of trust, understanding, and continuity. When your family is informed and included, they’re empowered to honor your legacy with confidence and clarity.
When your children are educated and prepared, the next question becomes: how do you ensure that wealth doesn’t just last for them, but also for grandchildren and beyond?
Thinking Beyond One Generation
Families who successfully preserve wealth for generations plan not just for children, but for grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This often involves using structures designed for long-term stewardship:
- Trusts that distribute assets over time, offering protection against mismanagement or outside threats.
- Family governance structures that bring relatives together for ongoing discussions about values and shared resources.
- Family foundations that involve multiple generations in philanthropy, reinforcing shared purpose and connection.
The goal isn’t simply to pass down money. It’s to create a structure that helps your family stay connected, supported, and guided by the values that built the wealth in the first place.
With the right mindset, strategies, and education in place, the final step is taking action. Start today, while you have the time and clarity to shape your legacy.
Your Legacy Starts Now
Preserving generational wealth requires more than smart investments. It requires intentional planning, ongoing education, and a fundamental shift in how you think about inheritance.
As a Personal Family Lawyer® Firm, we help families design Life & Legacy Plans that protect not only your money, but everything that truly matters—your values, your wisdom, and your family’s future stability. Our process begins with a Life & Legacy Planning Session, where we’ll clarify your goals, review your family dynamics, and create an inventory of your assets, both financial and intangible. From there, we’ll build a plan that ensures your legacy lasts for generations.
Ready to protect your wealth and everything it represents? Click here to schedule a complimentary 15-minute discovery call today.
https://cal.com/chavislawfirm/15consult
This article is a service of Chavis Law Firm, a Personal Family Lawyer Firm. We don’t just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That’s why we offer a Life & Legacy Planning Session, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session.