‘Inheriting £10m was a curse': why young heirs are giving away their fortune

Telegraph

12-03-2025

When Paolo Fresia inherited tens of millions of pounds following his mother's death, it was 'a blessing and a curse'.
At first, he simply acted as though it wasn't happening. Then, at age 22, 'my focus was to run away and pretend that it didn't exist', he says.
'Unfortunately for some other of my relatives who received money,' – hundreds of millions from the family vermouth company fortune were split between them – the windfall 'ended up corrupting their lifestyle and also their mental health, so it wasn't good for them, and that money was wasted.'
The young and very, very wealthy, it transpired, 'are not the people probably best suited to steward it'.
It is for this reason that 36-year-old Fresia, who lives in London, has joined Patriotic Millionaires UK – a group designed to help the rich give away their money.
With millennials set to inherit huge fortunes – and current millionaires giving away less than ever – younger adults are seeking new ways to part with their cash.
'You don't want to come out as wealthy to your friends'
Finding out you're set to inherit a windfall isn't the magical Hallmark moment many might expect, Fresia says.
As well as dealing with the trauma of the death that has inevitably accompanied it, often the young 'don't want to come out as wealthy to their friends'.
And so he ignored his fortune, working for Medicins Sans Frontieres in sustainability, before realising some of the company's investments didn't align with his beliefs. Things came to a head when Fresia reached his mid-20s.
'I really said, 'Okay, I can't run away from it any more. I've got to do something about it'.'
Fresia began looking into ways his money might make a difference. He had been working for a family firm in Hong Kong when he began enquiring about where his money might be put to good use.
He was pointed in the direction of networks like Patriotic Millionaires, which guide people who would otherwise have no idea how to spend their large sums.
'Life became a lot easier because there are incredible advisers that you can pay to give you advice. But in the end, the buck stops with you,' he adds.
'If you don't do the personal work of really acknowledging your privilege, understanding your responsibility to redistribute away resources and your power – and so sometimes acknowledging the fact that you're not the best person to make those investment or philanthropic decisions – then, of course, the whole thing doesn't work.'
Antonia Mitchell, director of Aurelia Philanthropy, says that around 40pc of her clients are aged under 40, typically seeking her help to spend away family money, rather than their own.
Some $90 trillion (£70 trillion) will be transferred to American millennials, with 94pc of the wealthiest fifth of households in the UK set to leave a bequest, according to figures from the Resolution Foundation.
Yet, unlike their parents, younger generations are most keen to spend on what Mitchell calls 'destitution issues', such as refugees, gender or race matters, those affecting the LGBTQ+ community, 'and medical research in which, interestingly, they include mental health – which is in stark contrast to their parents who tend to avoid it', Mitchell adds.
'A lot of these issues tend to be tricky to navigate between their generation and the older generation who have radically different views,' she explains. 'There's no doubt that the increase in discussion around issues like gender politics have shaped why they see it through that lens.'
Fresia says that among his age group and below, some wealthy people 'do feel really guilty, especially when the history of their wealth is in industries that are a little bit more controversial, like weapons or oil and gas – and it's understandable, of course.
'But it's about switching that to being more action-oriented, and saying, 'The money was earned in this way. How can you have a clear reparations plan to make good all the negative impacts that money might have made while being made, and then moving on to redistributing it?' I operate under that mindset'.
'It's the same inheritance issues everyone faces – but on steroids'
In typical millennial style, discussions over how to give away large sums often happen via dedicated retreats where attendees, clad in 'Tax the rich' T-shirts, visit workshops to confront their 'wealth shadows' – the physical embodiment of the anguish their fortune has wrought.
Online networks also play a big part, as does social media. Many groups have formed too (namely in America), including Donor Revolt and Resource Generation – all dedicated to helping the young syphon off inherited cash.
The methods people choose can be somewhat unorthodox.
Last year, Marlene Engelhorn, a 32-year-old from Vienna, announced that she would be distributing the £21.5m she had received from her grandmother's pharmaceutical empire to 50 recipients, who would be selected based on the suggestions from the 10,000 letters she posted out to fellow Austrians, which asked who they thought would be most deserving.
Mitchell says that 'giving is easy, giving well is hard, and as they start realising that giving well is difficult, that's when they call me'. Her client with the smallest fortune is giving away £60,000 – the largest, £1.5m.
'I do see a lot of tension,' she adds of the family dynamics that ensue – either because parents see their child's giving intentions as the rejection of a gift, relatives disagree over where money should go ('I was dealing with somebody who was actually really disappointed in their child… they cared about homelessness, but the father was uninterested'), or there are arguments over what they're entitled to in the first place.
'I always say it's the same challenges everybody else faces, but on steroids.'
Mitchell has one client who grew up on the edges of poverty, 'did really well for himself, and his children have grown up in private education… How does he then teach his children the values that have been central to his success?' she says.
Financial and social responsibility can be difficult things for rich kids to learn: 'Philanthropy is all about your moral compass.'
How, or perhaps what, to tell children is a perennial conundrum among many wealthy families.
Mitchell's past clients have included the offspring of an entrepreneur who 'hadn't realised how wealthy the family was, and then it all came out in the media. And for them that was quite traumatic and quite stressful… they'd read so many articles about rich people doing bad things, and they didn't want to be part of that.'
With some of the youngest inheritors now having children of their own, these quandaries are becoming more acute.
The question is 'really on my mind these days, actually', Fresia says of his four and six-year-old. 'I really hope that they will be angry at me when they're teenagers for not having given enough money away, as opposed to not having given enough money to them. But I'll see if I succeed in making them angry in that direction.'
He admits, however, that, 'I'm not a super frugal saint.'
His children go to private school, the family goes on nice holidays, and while he is a 'huge admirer' of people like Engelhorn, he says he is 'not as brave as them'. His risk tolerance has fallen since his brood expanded (currently 80pc of his wealth is invested in good causes).
He feels that his own generation, and the one they have borne, will have a very different experience of inheriting wealth.
'A lot of what was happening in previous generations is that because of this paradigm of accumulating and preserving, the younger generation was shielded from knowing how much they were going to inherit and what the money was for,' he explains.
'Whereas we are going to be very clear with our young children about the fact that this wealth, especially because it was inherited, is not for the purpose of living an overly luxurious life,' he says.
Rather, Fresia wants his children to learn that the money should be viewed 'for the purposes of being a good steward of it and redistributing it.'
Beyond the money, 'clarity, I think, is the biggest gift that I can give them, because I did not have that. I really didn't'.