How Do You Make the Most of Inherited Wealth?
Are you fully prepared for the blessings and responsibilities that come with inherited wealth? We find it helps beneficiaries to ask – and find their own answers to – three deceptively simple questions.
What do you need to know?
A good first step is to make sure you have all the information you need. Discover the goals your family’s wealth creator(s) have for the funds. Can you speak openly with your elders about what they expect and value? More insights might come from a family’s history and from learning how its wealth was built.
It is also essential to understand the current and future resources available to you: amounts, timing and conditions placed upon the funds. You and your advisers should examine the trusts and bequests of which you are a beneficiary.
Then look within. Identify your own goals and prioritize them honestly by envisioning what you want your life to look like in the near, medium and long terms. For each goal, specify its label (e.g., buy a home), dollar amount, timeline and priority level in your hierarchy of needs.
What do you need to have?
Plans and legal documents are essential. Every adult should create and update a thoughtful, long-term financial plan to:
• Organize your resources and goals into “buckets” depending on their timelines, priority levels and purposes (e.g., liquidity, lifestyle, legacy and perpetual growth).
• Examine the goals and resources in each bucket, then determine how you will achieve them. Each bucket can have a specific investment allocation aligned with its goals.
No matter your age, if you have or expect to receive wealth, you should have a core estate plan reflecting your intent, and update it whenever your life changes.
What do you need to do?
At least once a year, re-evaluate your plan to make sure resources and goals are aligned. Are you paying attention to tax-efficient asset location (e.g., contributing to retirement plans and a health savings account)? Do you foresee changes that might impact your finances? What legacy do you want to leave? Regularly reviewing this facilitates awareness of your spending and allows you to check for fraudulent activity.
Questions on inheritance answered
Take Ann, age 30, as an example. Ann is about to get married to John, and they want to buy a home and have children. Ann’s parents own a successful business and have made Ann the beneficiary of a trust for her and her descendants, with a standard clause directing the trustee to disburse funds for the beneficiary’s “health, education, maintenance and support.”
Ann spoke with her parents and learned they hoped she and her husband would support themselves with their own earnings and use the trust funds primarily to educate their children and successive generations. Her parents also revealed any future gifts for Ann would be in trust so that, if she ever divorced, her inheritance would not be part of any division of marital assets. With that, Ann and John can have an informed conversation about whether a pre-marital agreement is right for them.
Rick Barragan is the Managing Director,
Los Angeles Market Manager, for
J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
[email protected] | (310) 860-3658
privatebank.jpmorgan.com/los-angeles
Source: “How do you make the most of your inherited wealth?”, October 23, 2026.
