Multi-generational wealth transfer fails far more often than the estate-planning industry admits. Roy Williams and Vic Preisser studied roughly 3,500 families and found about 70% of transfers fail, meaning the money is substantially gone by the end of the second generation. Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877 holding over $100 million, more than the entire US Treasury held at the time. By a 1973 family reunion, roughly 120 descendants attended and not one was a millionaire. The Rockefeller trusts set up in 1934 still run, now into a seventh generation. The difference was never the tax work. One family prepared the people and the other only prepared the money.

The one rule three courts reached independently

Retained control is how estate protection gets taken away, and three separate courts in three countries arrived at the same place. In Britain, the 2017 Pugachev case held the settlor was sole beneficial owner of five New Zealand trusts because the powers he kept were personal. In New Zealand, Clayton v Clayton in 2016 found a power to appoint and remove beneficiaries was itself property worth the whole trust. In Australia, Kennon v Spry in 2008 put trust assets on the table in a divorce on a test of control plus benefit. None required proving the trust was fake. Each failed because the settlor kept too much.

The beneficiary form beats your will

The single highest-value move in estate planning costs an afternoon. William Kennedy named his wife on a DuPont pension form, divorced her in 1994, and never changed it. In 2009 the US Supreme Court held unanimously that the plan had to pay the roughly $400,000 to the ex-wife who had signed a paper waiving it. The form beat the divorce decree and it beat the will. A pension, a 401k, an IRA, an RRSP, a superannuation fund, a life insurance policy: none of these pass under your will. Go and check every one this week.

The $60,000 trap for non-US investors

If you are not a US person and die holding shares in US companies, the United States exempts only $60,000 before estate tax that climbs to 40%. A US person gets $15,000,000, a ratio of 250:1. Your family also cannot release the shares without an IRS transfer certificate, which commonly takes 6 to 9 months. The fix is a ticker change to an Irish-domiciled fund, which cuts US estate exposure to zero and drops dividend withholding from 30% to 15%.

The same move, opposite outcomes by country

Almost every English-speaking country abolished its death tax and kept collecting under another name. The US exemption is now $15,000,000 per person, made permanent in July 2025. Britain froze its nil-rate band at 325,000 pounds since 2009 and holds it until 2031. Australia has had no death duty since 1979 but taxes superannuation on its way to adult children at 17% or 32%.

The complete IR-018 report breaks down all three wealth bands, every jurisdiction, dynasty trust drafting, and the free moves that beat any structure you can buy. Read the full multi-generational estate analysis.