FAMILY MATTERS IN THE GREAT WEALTH TRANSFER
Discussing plans for an inheritance before the inevitable happens makes for a less stressful outcome.
4 min
At kitchen tables and in boardrooms across the country, Australian families are starting to solve a multi-trillion-dollar puzzle: how to pass on wealth to the next generation.
As the country’s Baby Boomers begin to enjoy retirement and many step out of the day-to-day operations of their businesses, they have time to consider the legacies they want to leave and how to help their children and grandchildren thrive after they have passed.
Australian women look set to inherit a significant chunk of the nation’s wealth and will shoulder a big responsibility in managing it for future generations. A March 2024 report by JBWere projected that women will become managers of 65 percent of the $5 trillion that is set to change hands in coming years.
This trend is one part of the phenomenon known as the “oldest daughter effect,” or the tendency for daughters to take a leadership and decision-making role within families.
Former JBWere Australia chief executive Maria Lykouras says oldest daughters often take on caring responsibilities as parents age, and parents in turn rely on them to help preserve and manage their wealth.
“They want that legacy to be managed in a way similar to how they thought about it and for the purposes that were important to them,” she says.
“They see the eldest daughter as the trusted person in the family that will continue that legacy and will take care of the broader family finances for everyone else.”
No matter who wealth is being passed onto, it’s important for all families to prepare for this moment. If you’ve ever read an Agatha Christie murder mystery or watched the siblings of fictional media mogul Logan Roy battle over his legacy in Succession, you know the level of drama that can emerge through the inheritance process.
It can crystallise family values, but if done carelessly can cause undue confusion, anger and hurt for loved ones.
Here are three essential rules experts say will help smooth the transition of wealth while making sure the next generation is properly prepared for the responsibilities and opportunities that lie ahead.
Get in early
Wealth managers agree that the single biggest mistake they see families make is leaving it too late to have detailed conversations about how the wealth transition will work for them.
“The last thing that you want is for you to pass away and then the money gets into the hands of the children, but the children either don’t know what the money was, they don’t know where it is, or there are multiple children and they are all vying for it,” Lykouras says.
KPMG’s global leader of family business, Robyn Langsford, said she has seen families where adult children are in their 40s and 50s yet their parents have still not communicated with them about how wealth will be distributed when they pass.
“If you are part of a pool of siblings in that age group and you don’t have transparency about where the ultimate ownership is going to end up, that can lead to a lot of anxiety and tension in the sibling group,” she says.
Managing partner at Integro Private Wealth, Justin Gilmour, spends significant time speaking to both the parents and children well ahead of a transition of assets to clarify the priorities of both groups.
“What I think happens a lot of the time is that there are assumptions made, and those assumptions are incorrect,” he says.
“There are not open and frank discussions early enough… That breeds resentment.”
Explain your reasoning
In many family groups, not everyone will be receiving an equal slice of the family wealth.
Advisors see families factoring in a range of issues when dividing assets, including the independent wealth of adult children and their involvement in family businesses.
The key, however, is explaining the reasoning behind the division ahead of time.
“Where it is going to be unequal, that person needs to be proactive in communicating that fact and also the reasons they have come to that decision,” Langsford says.
“The worst thing you can have is some family member feeling like their father or mother loved them less … but actually [the decision] could be due to something completely different.”
“One child might have sacrificed a lot more to further the family’s wealth, for example.”
Now is also the time to discuss family values and how the next generation will manage the assets in line with these.
“Most importantly, have conversations around: What is the purpose of the family’s wealth? Do they want to give money to charity? What do they want to do with the business?” Lykouras says.
Formalise it
It’s also important to think about the formal structures around your plan.
Grant Thornton’s national head of family business consulting, Kirsten Taylor-Martin, says too often families develop a blueprint for how the younger generation will take control of assets, but the wills and estate plans of older parents do not allow for this in practice.
“What you find is that so many families don’t actually make sure all their legal documentation makes that happen,” Taylor-Martin says.
“The estate plan has to be a crucial step in your succession planning process to make sure your vision comes to life.”
It’s also possible to link a formal document like a family constitution, which is not legally binding but sets out a plan for how decisions will be made and what will happen to the family business if there is one.
In some families, writing constitution documents has helped clarify the path forward.
“What it has done is ended all of those assumptions. It basically preserves family relationships.”
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
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