Of the $124 trillion changing hands over the next couple of decades, about $47 trillion is heading to women.
A Forbes piece last month put its finger on the part everyone else is celebrating past: wealth can change hands without power changing hands.
Reader, I have seen this movie.
A daughter inherits the shares. Her brother inherits the shares and the corner office. On paper, she’s an owner. In the room, she’s a guest. The money moved. The power stayed exactly where it always was — it just got a nicer signature on the paperwork.
This is the quiet failure mode of the whole “great wealth transfer” story. Everyone’s counting the dollars. Almost nobody’s asking whether the person receiving them gets an actual vote — or just a very generous seat at a table someone else still runs.
Here’s the uncomfortable part for family business owners: this one doesn’t fix itself when the will is read. If your daughter is going to lead — not just own — that’s a decision you make out loud, years early, in front of the people who’d otherwise quietly route around her.
Assets transfer by wire. Authority transfers by whether anyone was brave enough to say her name in the meeting.
So before you split it “equally,” ask yourself which of your kids you’re handing money, and which you’re handing the actual keys. They are not the same gift.
And everyone in the family already knows the difference.