Can We Trust Our Kids With Their Own Future, With Guardrails Not Fortresses?

November 11, 2025

By Katherine Hayes

When I got engaged, I was excited to have a partner in upholding my family’s expectations around the responsibility for inherited wealth. Values like stewardship and philanthropy were high on the list. I was motivated to communicate that once we were married, we would share responsibilities for my portion of that wealth equally: “What’s mine is yours!”

However, the trustees overseeing my inheritance had other ideas: they recommended we sign a prenuptial agreement. 

When I presented the prenup, my fiancé was upset, and rightfully so. He recognized the gaslighting inherent in a prenup, that my offer to share ownership equally was a moot point. His reaction highlights a confounding element of inherited wealth held in trusts: while the inherited money “belonged” to me, it was held in a trust that stipulated I would not be able to make autonomous decisions over that inheritance until I was 35, well into adulthood.

The message that stipulation conveyed to me was that I, at age 30, could not be trusted with my money. Additionally, there were all kinds of constraints built into the trust meant to steer me towards behavior that matched my grandparents’ values, not my own sense of how to spend, invest, or donate money. 

Trusts are the preferred mechanism to pass financial wealth on to the next generation because they can provide protection for and from the beneficiaries. The value in the trust is considered part of the beneficiary’s net worth, but the beneficiary may have little or no agency to direct how that money is invested, distributed, or redistributed. Trusts build in protective measures to anticipate and mitigate any negative future outcomes, such as drug addiction or just reckless misuse. The main protective measure is setting the age of distribution into older adulthood. However, there’s no perfect “age of maturity” at which inheritors will make all the “right” decisions with their money: a 60 year old can blow through money at the racetrack just as easily as a 25 year old. 

One could argue it’s the wealth holder’s prerogative to structure inheritances any way they see fit. However, a growing number of young people today recognize the systems within which their family’s wealth was accumulated were not created equally. It may be more reflective of their values to make larger donations earlier in life to support the changes they want to see in their future world. They would rather use their money now to help keep social welfare organizations alive rather than rest assured that their money will protect them as individuals if the future is bleak.

My fiancé and I decided to go against the advice of the professionals: we did not sign a prenup. Though we did eventually divorce, it didn’t spark conflict over money. In fact, the whole process cost us less than a used car each. We easily agreed on all the financial issues because we entered the marriage with real trust in each other, not in a legal document. If I had insisted on a prenup, the divorce would likely have been more contentious. 

Can we afford the same trust to our children? Trusts can be set up with the flexibility to allow protection until they reach an age where both the grantor and the beneficiary agree they are ready for distribution. The beneficiary can be given agency over how the money is invested, providing a sense of ownership over the impact of those investments, allowing them to align the money with their values.

Traditional trusts like mine were intended to be in my best interest, but I wasn’t actually a real consideration. As a young adult, I felt trapped in a dependent relationship with the trustees, struggling to take ownership and responsibility for the wealth. 

While being a beneficiary of generational inheritance provided me many comforts and opportunities, the trusts didn’t nurture a sense of self-worth. Trusts inevitably create a paternalistic relationship between beneficiary and trustee. This did not foster security:  it created a feeling of helplessness and dependence that I had to work hard to overcome.

Today, I understand how trusts built with too much protection can undermine an inheritor’s self-worth and generate fear of perceived scarcity. Eventually, I divested from my family’s estate planning protections so I could structure my own independent investment and philanthropic accounts in line with my values. Is it possible to protect our children from any and all mistakes they might make?  Maybe stockpiling for some unknown future is far more damaging than allowing them some financial freedom to learn on their own terms, develop a sense of agency, and gain competency to discern where their capital can be of greater use to more than just themselves. 

Katherine Hayes is the founder of In Her Interest, which seeks to empower women inheritors of wealth to redistribute their financial capital in collaboration with fundraisers to disrupt the wealth protection industry.