The New Currency of Wealth: Educating Heirs Before They Inherit

For Australia’s high-net-wealth families, the question is no longer how to grow wealth—it’s how to ensure the next generation knows what to do with it.

“Most affluent parents aren’t staying up at night worried about the next investment opportunity,” says wealth adviser Antony Selby. “They’re worried their money will mess up their kids.”

In an era marked by skyrocketing intergenerational transfers of wealth, Selby has observed a dramatic shift in his clients’ priorities. Increasingly, they’re not just seeking financial strategies—they’re seeking guidance on how to prepare their children for the emotional, practical, and psychological burden of inheritance.

“It’s one of the most common requests I get: ‘Can you help educate our children about money?’” Selby says. “There’s a growing realisation among wealthy families that simply leaving money isn’t enough. If the recipients aren’t prepared, that wealth can quickly become a liability instead of a legacy.”

Selby, who has advised Australia’s affluent for decades, says the old model of wealth management—built around transactions and product sales—is obsolete. In its place, a new approach has emerged: one that blends traditional financial advice with legacy planning, values-based education, and even elements of family therapy.

“We’ve moved from preparing money for heirs, to preparing heirs for money,” he explains. “That’s a fundamental change.”

The timing couldn’t be more critical. With Baby Boomers now well into retirement and multi-generational estates becoming more common, the next wave of wealth recipients—many of them in their 20s and 30s—face an unprecedented challenge. Unlike their parents, who often built wealth through work, these heirs risk inheriting it without the context, responsibility, or resilience to manage it.

And that, Selby says, is the real risk.

“Wealth can distort perspective. It can create dependence. It can rob young people of direction, and of the emotional tools they need to live independently,” he says. “That’s why so many of my clients now see their role not just as benefactors, but as mentors.”

What does that mentorship look like? For Selby, it often involves structured conversations about money values and family purpose. It means involving children early in philanthropic decisions, educating them about investment basics, and creating environments where financial literacy is as important as academic success. In some cases, it includes working with external coaches, psychologists, and advisers to help adult children develop their own identity outside the family’s financial narrative.

“There’s no simple formula,” he admits. “But three things make a difference: being intentional about values, developing real-life skills, and giving heirs the right mix of independence and support.”

While popular culture paints the ultra-wealthy as laser-focused on returns and deal flow, Selby says the reality is more nuanced. “Behind closed doors, it’s not about chasing more wealth. It’s about risk management, family cohesion, and the question we hear again and again: ‘How do we make sure this wealth is a force for good?’”

He points to the old proverb, “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,” a warning that’s echoed across cultures. “It’s a reminder that financial inheritance must be matched with emotional and intellectual inheritance too.”

As the face of wealth management continues to change, Selby believes the industry must evolve alongside it—offering not just financial tools, but guidance through some of the most deeply personal challenges families will ever face.

“Money isn’t neutral,” he says. “It shapes families, for better or worse. The difference lies in how well we prepare the next generation to carry it.”

For many Australians, the 2026 Federal Budget initially felt like a direct challenge to the way wealth is created, held and transferred between generations.

The headlines were immediate: changes to capital gains tax, reforms to discretionary trusts, restrictions on negative gearing and increased scrutiny of investment structures. Unsurprisingly, affluent families, business owners and investors began asking the same question:

Is the way we hold our wealth still fit for purpose?

In recent days, the government has announced several significant amendments following industry consultation and public feedback, including exempting testamentary trusts from the proposed 30 per cent minimum tax and expanding capital gains tax concessions for small businesses.

The backdown is welcome. But it also highlights something much bigger.

This Budget has accelerated a conversation that many Australian families have been postponing for years.

The conversation is not really about tax. It is about wealth stewardship.

For decades, Australians have built wealth through businesses, property, investments and careful long-term planning. Yet many families have not revisited the legal structures surrounding those assets in years, sometimes decades.

We often see clients who have spent years building significant wealth, only to discover their legal arrangements no longer reflect their current circumstances.

Their children are now adults. They may own multiple properties.

They may have sold a business, entered a second marriage, become grandparents or accumulated digital assets that did not exist when their original estate plans were prepared.

The trust that distributes income may need to be reconsidered. The bucket company may no longer be so attractive.

The Budget has simply exposed a reality that already existed: wealth structures cannot remain static while life continues to evolve.

Importantly, trusts themselves are not the issue.

Trusts are legitimate planning tools that provide flexibility, protection and continuity. When used appropriately, they allow families to adapt to changing circumstances over time.

And neither is tax the issue, really. Getting the fundamentals right is more important for long-term, sustainable wealth than a few favourable tax treatments around the edges.

The real issue is complacency.

Too often, families create structures and assume the job is done. It isn’t.

Estate planning is no longer a document you sign once and file away in a drawer. It is an ongoing process that should evolve alongside your life.

We are also seeing a broader shift in how Australians define wealth itself. It is no longer just the family home and an investment portfolio.

Modern wealth includes businesses, digital assets, cryptocurrency, intellectual property, frequent flyer points and increasingly complex family arrangements.

At the same time, Australians are living longer than ever before, meaning wealth may need to support multiple generations simultaneously. This creates new responsibilities and new risks.

How do you help your children enter the property market without exposing family wealth to relationship breakdowns?

How do you structure wealth so that it remains a source of opportunity rather than future conflict?

These are the questions families should be asking now.

The recent debate surrounding testamentary trusts also serves as an important reminder that policy decisions can have unintended consequences for vulnerable Australians. It is encouraging that the government has listened to feedback and clarified its position.

But the lesson remains: the wealth landscape is changing.

Increasingly, governments, regulators and tax authorities are paying closer attention to how wealth is held and transferred. That means families cannot afford to adopt a “set-and-forget” approach to their structures.

The families who will be best placed for the future are not necessarily those with the greatest wealth.

They are the families with the greatest clarity. Clarity around ownership, succession and governance. And clarity around how wealth will transition from one generation to the next.

Ultimately, preserving wealth is not about avoiding change.

It is about preparing for it.

Because the greatest risk is not change itself.

It is losing the ability to respond to it.

Anthony Hunt is Co-Founder of Wealth Lawyers and former COO of Westpac Private Bank. He advises business owners, investors and affluent Australian families on wealth protection, succession planning and intergenerational wealth transfer

The New Currency of Wealth: Educating Heirs Before They Inherit

Australia’s wealthy families are shifting focus from building wealth to preparing the next generation to handle it.

The Federal Budget may have softened some of its proposed tax reforms, but it has exposed a bigger issue: too many families are relying on wealth structures that no longer reflect the realities of modern life.