Wealthy families spend years arranging how their money will pass on: trusts, holding companies, wills. The surveys published in recent weeks suggest the paperwork is ahead of the people. Half of North American family offices say their succession plan is incomplete or does not exist. Among affluent American parents, only about one in five has shared a completed estate plan with their adult children.
We covered the five classic mistakes in an earlier post. This one looks at the newest numbers and turns them into three conversations that families tend to put off.
The new numbers
RBC Wealth Management and Campden Wealth published The North America Family Office Report 2026 on 29 September. It is based on 155 single-family offices and private multi-family offices: 123 in the United States, 21 in Canada and 11 elsewhere in the Americas. The average family behind them is worth about $2.25 billion.
On succession, the report offers two views:
- Half of the offices describe their succession plan as incomplete or non-existent.
- Asked how formal the plan is, 52% said it is informal, or talked about but not written down, and 23% said there is no plan at all. That leaves only about a quarter with a documented plan.
On timing, one in five offices has had a change of generation in its leadership in the past five years. Among the rest, 52% do not expect one for at least ten years.
Two other findings matter for what heirs will inherit. First, 86% of the offices invest in private markets, which make up about 30% of the average portfolio. Second, cybersecurity and data breaches are now the top near-term operational concern, named by 59% of respondents.
Global surveys point the same way. In UBS’s 2025 report on 317 family offices, just over half (53%) had a plan for passing on the family’s wealth. J.P. Morgan’s 2026 report, based on 333 family offices, also points to many offices without a clear succession plan for their key decision-makers.
What parents tell their children
Fidelity’s research covers a wider group: affluent Americans aged 55 and over, not only families with their own office.
- In the 2025 Family & Finance Study (fieldwork July to August 2025; parents with at least $500,000 in investable assets and children aged 25 to 54), 52% of parents had not discussed their net worth with their children, and 68% had not shared details of the inheritance. Meanwhile, 95% of the adult children said they were ready to manage inherited wealth, and 25% of the parents disagreed.
- In the 2026 Transition Ready Family study (November 2025 to January 2026; 654 married or partnered adults with a net worth of at least $500,000 and at least one adult child), only 21% had communicated a completed estate plan to their adult children. Those who had were more than three times as likely to feel highly confident about their planning.
Conversation 1: who decides next
A succession plan is first a plan for decisions, not for money. Who signs if the main decision-maker cannot? Who chairs the family meeting? Who hires and fires the office’s staff? The RBC and Campden press release notes that nearly a third of offices worry about the retirement of key family leaders and staff, so the plan has to cover employees as well as relatives. One line in the report sums it up: “Succession happens whether you plan for it or not.” A spoken understanding is a start, but only a written one survives a dispute or a sudden illness.
Conversation 2: what there is and who gets what
This is the conversation most parents avoid, and the Fidelity numbers show it. The aim is not to hand a figure to a 25-year-old. It is to agree what each child needs to know, and when. Many families start with the structure and the roles: which trusts exist, who the trustees are, what is expected of each heir. The amounts can come later. The gap between 95% of children who feel ready and the parents who doubt it is exactly what such a talk should close.
Conversation 3: what the next generation will actually hold
Heirs inherit more than a number. They inherit assets with locks and keys. Private market funds cannot always be sold on demand: nearly one in five offices with private market investments tried to exit a fund position this year, and 47% of those could not do so as expected, according to the press release. Digital access is the other lock. RBC’s summary of the report says a quarter of offices saw a family member’s personal accounts breached. A practical step is one inventory: what the family owns, how quickly each asset could be sold, and who holds the passwords and signing rights.
A fair caveat
All of these are surveys of people who chose to respond. The RBC and Campden sample is 155 offices, and Fidelity’s samples are affluent households, not billionaires. The report and its publicity do not always agree: the press release says 23% of offices had a generational transfer, the report says one in five, and RBC’s own summary gives 56% rather than 59% for the cybersecurity concern. We used the report’s figures. An informal plan is also not the same as no plan.
Five lessons to take away
- A plan nobody has seen is half a plan. Sharing a completed plan is linked to much higher confidence.
- Write it down. Only about a quarter of the offices surveyed have a documented succession plan.
- Plan for the staff as well as the family. Key employees retire too.
- Talk about roles before amounts. Structure and expectations are easier to discuss than numbers.
- Keep one inventory with exits and keys. List what can be sold, how fast, and who has access.
Questions to bring to your advisors
If our main decision-maker could not act tomorrow, who would sign, and is that written down? What do our children know about the plan and their role in it? Which of our assets could not be sold within a year, and who controls access to our accounts? These are questions to bring to your advisors, not advice.