What would you do if your inherited wealth was built on slavery, fossil fuels or came at the price of neglect? Meet the guilty rich who want nothing to do with their money
organ Curtis’s life story is the American Dream in reverse. Her great, great, great grandfather was a banker in early 1800s New York – he invested in railroads, while his brother invested in Central American mines. The family wealth grew as it passed through the generations, and Curtis’s father added to the pile as a management consultant for “major” firms. Naturally, Curtis had a gilded childhood: educated in west London private schools; going on annual Swiss ski holidays; her own pony.
We are at the beginning of a phenomenon nicknamed the Great Wealth Transfer. According to financial services group Sanlam, in the next decade, millennials will inherit £327bn from their parents. The trouble is, not everyone wants this money. A small but seemingly growing subset of young people feel guilt and shame about their inheritances – in response, some seek therapy, some seek drugs and others seek social change. Last year, one man made the mistake of seeking Twitter.
“What we see with some very, very wealthy families is quite a lot of neglect,” says Robert Batt, founder of, a London-based mental health clinic for wealthy clients. “Now, that’s not neglect in the sense of a child going unfed,” Batt continues, explaining that one teen began self-harming after a difficult day at school. “She goes back to the big house in Belgravia and no one’s home.
Yet the guilty rich are growing in number – or at least, more are speaking out. MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of the world’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos, has given $12bn to non-profits in the past two years. “Like many, I watched the first half of 2020 with a mixture of heartbreak and horror,” Scott wrote in a July blog post that year, adding that she hoped, “people troubled by recent events [would] make new connections between privileges they’ve enjoyed and benefits they’ve taken for granted.
Curtis first became aware of her privilege aged eight, when her family purchased a second home on the Isle of Wight. “I had the sense that we were different,” Curtis says – in her teens, a close friend got a job to help her mother with the rent. “And it was like, ‘Oh, wow’, I never even had to think about supporting my family.”
“I felt guilt, shame, anger… and a fiery longing to change it,” Curtis says. The money accumulated to $600,000 before she obtained full access in 2020 – so far, she has redistributed two-thirds. She has written a poem entitled. “Maybe you, like me, have an ancestor / you’ve been too ashamed to even speak of,” it begins. Later: “What we are most ashamed of / is not what they did / but what we are yet to do.”guilt was a useful emotion that provoked action. But it doesn’t always work this way.
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