Shutting Out the Kids from the Family Fortune Want to avoid raising spoiled kids?
Consider the Wellington Burt School of Wealthy Parenting.
Wellington R. Burt was a rich timber baron from Saginaw, Mich. He died in 1919 with a multimillion-dollar fortune -- one of America's largest at the time.
Yet rather than risk messing up his kids lives with a huge inheritance, he created an unusual will.
He stated that his fortune would be distributed to the family -- but only 21 years after his grandchildren's death...
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112715/shutting-kids-out-family-fortune-wsj?mod=family-kids_parents But if a big inheritance will mess you up, wouldn't that be just as true for his great-great-grandkids. I suppose it was meant more as a slap in the face to his children and their kids, whom he would have had an opportunity to dislike. From a practical point of view, it gets spread out over more people after a few generations, thus mitigating the effect.
And he must have cared somewhat about his family, or he could have done plenty of other things with the money. He wanted his family to have it, just none of the relatives he'd already met. Crafty old bugger.