61% of adult children say inherited wealth hurt the family. 29% of parents agree.

On October 20, Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management, the bank's wealth arm, asked affluent parents and adult children about inherited wealth and got two answers. 61% of the adult children said it had brought hurt feelings, a fight about fairness, a rift, or a legal dispute. 29% of the parents said the same.

The two groups were surveyed separately, so a parent in the first group is not sitting next to their own child.

One generation can treat the transfer as finished once a number is written down. The other can treat it as damage when that number was never said, or when the split feels like a score on who did the care. Both can be honest about the papers in front of them.

Versta Research, a Chicago market-research firm, ran the interviews online from May 11 to June 10 for the bank's 2026 Wealth Transfer Study. The parent group was 817 people, ages 61 to 79, with at least $1 million in investable assets, who expect to leave money to their children. The adult children were 787 people, ages 29 to 60, whose parents meet that bar.

The families in the study averaged $3.7 million in investable assets. Wells Fargo also talked to extra households above $3 million, including some above $10 million, then weighted the answers to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, the Fed's study of household wealth. A household with $10 million counts in proportion to how common that wealth is, so it does not crowd out a family with $1 million.

The amount is where the two stories come apart. 93% of parents said they know how much they expect to pass on, and 79% said that figure is already in a written financial plan. 54% of adult children said their parents have told them what they are likely to inherit.

A number nobody has heard can still be a careful plan. It is a private one. A brother or sister has no way to know what fair was supposed to mean if the only copy is in a drawer.

81% of parents said the estate documents they need are done. 66% of adult children believe the file is that far along.

Even among parents who said the file is complete, 44% said they do not fully understand what the plan does. Lorne Maltenfort, national director of private wealth planning for the wealth arm, said documents alone do not make a family ready. A thick folder can still leave both generations guessing.

22% of adult children cannot say whether they have been named executor or trustee, the person who carries out a will or a trust. The same share cannot say whether they hold a power of attorney, the authority to make health or money decisions if a parent cannot.

On a different question from the one about harm, 61% of adult children worry that bringing up money will make them look as if they want the inheritance. 53% said they would be uncomfortable asking.

Parents have their own reasons to wait. 32% are unsure how much to say, and 25% worry the talk will dull their children's ambition. 22% worry it will teach entitlement, and 20% worry about announcing a plan that might still change.

49% of adult children think raising the subject could start a fight. 20% of parents see it that way.

More than three-quarters of parents said they feel comfortable discussing the main pieces of a transfer. 21% said they have had a detailed talk about the estate plan with their children. 29% said that talk has barely happened, or has not happened.

Heather Hunt-Ruddy runs the Central Division at Wells Fargo Advisors, the brokerage tied to the wealth arm. She called the stall a stalemate. Adult children do not want to look greedy, and parents do not want to send the wrong message.

When the inheritance is a family company, the gap gets wider, and the sample gets small. Of adult children whose parents own a business, 67% expect it to pass to them or their siblings. Of the owners, 19% expect to hand ownership to their children.

24% of those owners expect to sell to an outside buyer. 36% expect to wind the business down. Wells Fargo asked 65 owners and 181 children of owners, so a family should not treat 67 and 19 as the odds for their own shop.

Read side by side, the answers are two plans. The child is counting on the company. The owner may already be planning a sale, or a close.

84% of adult children said a meeting with their parents' advisor would leave them more prepared. 34% of parents said that meeting has happened. 14% said it happens regularly, so the person who can explain the plan has often sat only with the parent.

Nothing in the Wells Fargo tables says how this lands for Asian families, or for a flat and an account in another country.

Pew Research Center asked a related question in September 2023, about duty rather than a fight that had already happened. Kim Parker, the center's director of social trends research, and Rachel Minkin reported that 37% of Asian adults say parents have at least a fair amount of responsibility to save money to leave their children. Among White adults, 28% said that.

Where leaving money is treated as part of a parent's job, the parent can think the work is finished because the papers exist. The child, never told the number, can think the work was skipped.

86% of parents and 84% of adult children in the Wells Fargo study said the most important thing passed down is values. The 61-to-29 gap is still the money nobody has explained.

Three questions from the survey are often still blank, and a family can answer them from papers they already have. Has the child been told the amount, and do they know if they are the executor? If there is a business, is the plan to hand it over, sell it, or close it?

When siblings come away with different numbers, Sibling Dynamics When Parents Have Resources walks through unequal gifts and who manages the money. If a flat or an account sits in another country, Cross-Border Inheritance and Probate Awareness for Diaspora Families covers which country controls which paper.