THE GREAT WEALTH TRANSFER

Never have generations enjoyed longer life expectancy than Baby Boomers and Generation X, and no generation so far is likely to retire with greater wealth. This great wealth transfer is a major social challenge but arguably a massive opportunity for the advice and financial services industries.

- Lachlan Colquhoun writes.

The finale of the dynastic hit television series Succession is a disaster for the siblings squabbling to lead the media empire their father built.

With family relationships destroyed by toxic infighting, the siblings are so divided that they lose control of the business to outsiders.

Meanwhile, in a Las Vegas courtroom the real-life saga of the Murdoch family, who inspired the series, succession has also been on the line as patriarch Rupert Murdoch seeks to amend the family trust to guarantee his political legacy.

These two examples, from fact and fiction, have transfixed viewers and news junkies around the world, possibly because the stories resonate - as a cautionary tale - with what many families are experiencing in terms of transferring their own intergenerational wealth.

Succession and the Murdoch saga make great viewing, but in most families, the wealth transfer will be significantly less toxic.

In most cases, the good news is that while there will be challenges, much of the wealth will be transferred in an orderly and equitable way to the people it was always intended for.

The challenge beyond ensuring relations between siblings and the generations do not fracture is in understanding the regulatory framework and whether the financial industry has the right products to optimise the transition.

Supplementary to that is where the balance lies between enabling wealthy families to transfer their wealth smoothly and disadvantaging families which are not so well off. Another conversation is how wealth transfer has the potential to widen wealth inequality.

Australia abolished death duties in the early 1980s, and while there are no suggestions of bringing them back as they were, the Australian Taxation Office still reaps millions of dollars a year from non-dependent adult children when they access their parent's superannuation.