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Breaking the Silence

The shifting nature of wealth and inheritance has families talking — about values as well as money.


SETTING PRIORITIES Martin Rothenberg, with his granddaughter Rachel Batizfalvi, set up charitable foundations for his children to run instead of giving them lots of money to spend on themselves.

By JOHN LELAND
March 18, 2008

WHEN Dal LaMagna, founder of the Tweezerman company, considered how to leave his wealth to his two children, he thought back to his early 30s, just before he achieved success. At the time, said Mr. LaMagna, 61, “I thought if I could get 600 bucks a week, I could retire on that, and I would be very happy.”

So Mr. LaMagna, who built a $30 million company — which makes beauty tools like tweezers — before selling it in 2004, set up charitable lead trusts for his son and daughter to provide them weekly incomes of about $600, starting when they turn 30 years old. (They are now 19 and 27.)

“If you give them more, it’s counterproductive to their motivation,” said Mr. LaMagna, who has spent some of his children’s potential inheritance on antiwar causes, including his own campaigns for Congress and president. “I didn’t want to take away from them the drive to do things for themselves.”

With the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in American history now under way — the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy has estimated that $41 trillion will change hands by 2052 — Mr. LaMagna and others are reconsidering the meaning of inheritance, thinking not just about the money but about the values they want to pass with it.

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