China’s rich tend to rack their brains and hire all sorts of professionals for estate planning.
As they constantly seek better ways to manage their wealth and protect their offspring, the mainlanders could perhaps take a look at how Germans are handling the same issue.
Chinese children generally feel that they are entitled to their parents’ wealth. We hear from time to time reports of youngsters harming or even killing their parents because the elders didn’t give them money.
Meanwhile, there are also many cases of disputes among family members over who should get what from estates left behind by patriarchs.
In Germany, people have realized that letting youngsters get their hands on huge wealth easily could be the worst thing a parent can do their kids.
This has prompted many affluent people to donate their wealth to charity.
German youths generally agree, or even applaud such decisions, because they realize that parents’ money belongs to the parents and they have the right to determine where it should go after their death.
Compared to inheriting, youngsters prefer to work and find their own success.
“I don’t have the right to use my parents’ money. And I don’t want to,” a 24-year old son of the boss of a big transportation firm wrote on a social media platform in Germany recently.
The youngster acknowledged that it’s better that the parents “spend money on what the society needs”, rather than merely hand over the wealth to their children.
“My parents have left us the chance to achieve our own wealth through our own efforts, and get the same kind of joy and fulfillment as they did,” he wrote.
That’s a message that wealthy Chinese parents, as well as their children, would do well to bear in mind.
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RC