Silence, not taxes, is the real transfer risk

InvestmentNews' coverage of a new LendingTree study frames the scale: homeowners aged 65 and older are projected to pass down roughly $17.2 trillion in housing wealth between 2026 and 2045, an average of $859 billion a year, according to a model built on Federal Reserve data on household net worth and Social Security Administration mortality tables. California alone accounts for a projected $3.4 trillion—nearly one dollar in five—more than Florida's projected $1.6 trillion and New York's $1.2 trillion combined, and at the household level Hawaii leads with $3.1 million, ahead of California at $2.9 million and the District of Columbia at $2.8 million.

Where the wealth sits matters less than what the family has said about it. The same LendingTree survey of 1,585 U.S. consumers found that 33 percent of Americans younger than 65 expect to receive an inheritance or financial gift, rising to 53 percent among those earning $100,000 or more, while only 43 percent of Americans aged 65 or older say they plan to give one. That is a ten-point gap between heirs' expectation and elders' stated intention—the misalignment an advisor is paid to resolve.

Fidelity Investments' 2025 Family & Finance Study, which surveyed parents aged 55 and older with at least $500,000 in investable assets and their adult children aged 25 to 54, shows how much of that gap sits below the surface: more than half of parents have not shared their net worth, and 68 percent have not discussed what the children may inherit or when.

LegalShield's June 2025 survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults suggests the silence reaches down to the most basic document. Nearly one in five Boomers and Gen Xers acknowledged their families do not know whether a will exists. Warren Schlichting, LegalShield's CEO, put it plainly: "The greatest risk to this $84 trillion wealth transfer isn't taxes — it's silence."

Part of the gap likely comes down to etiquette: parents do not want to be heard valuing an inheritance while they are still alive, and adult children do not want to appear to be waiting for it. Left to itself, that standoff produces exactly the numbers LendingTree and Fidelity measured—one generation planning silently, the other expecting silently. The advisor is the natural third party to break it, which is why failing to do so is a business risk rather than a manners problem.

The silence carries a direct business consequence: firms that fail to engage heirs and surviving spouses risk losing client assets at precisely the moment those assets are at their largest, as InvestmentNews' write-up states. An heir who has never been in the room has little reason to stay with the firm, only a reason to take the money somewhere familiar.

Some of the ground is familiar from Make-A-Will Month coverage: only about a quarter of American adults have a will, and many existing plans are outdated. What the new research adds is the layer underneath the document—communicated intent. A will no one has discussed is a plan without a constituency.

The LendingTree projection and the consumer survey together collapse the default assumption: $17.2 trillion does not transfer by inertia. It transfers when the older generation states an intention, chooses a vehicle and tells the next generation what the vehicle contains, and the survey data suggests most families have not finished step one.

The transfer is a governance exercise, not an inheritance event, and LendingTree's housing-wealth slice is the same lesson in miniature: the families who make it through will be the ones who hold the meeting, set the expectation and review beneficiary designations in the same calendar year, rather than treating those as separate events.

The advisor's role is to manufacture that meeting before the need is obvious. Make the multi-generational conversation a standing item on the annual calendar, with an agenda built around numbers rather than documents, and bill for it as deliberately as for the plan, because what is free is often what is skipped. A family that has already had the conversation is a family that will not need to shop for a new advisor after the estate settles.

Watch which firms start running client meetings that look like family councils rather than portfolio reviews. On this evidence, they are the ones who will still be holding the assets when the $17.2 trillion actually lands.