Quora Answer: How can You Make a Large Inheritance Last?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How can you make a large inheritance last?”

One thing you should do, no matter the size of the inheritance, is never stop working.  A career or a business is not solely about accumulating wealth.  It is about personal growth.

Second, put the inheritance into an investment vehicle, a trust, a private limited company, or, at scale, a Variable Capital Company.  This mitigates your tax liability.  Singapore imposes no capital gains tax and no estate tax, so the structure itself does not create a new tax burden here.  It lets you manage the inheritance and track investment growth properly, rather than watching it sit in a personal account with no discipline around it.

Finally, diversify your investments and focus on an extended investment horizon.  Get yourself a good financial adviser.  If the sum is substantial enough, the bank will assign an investment manager as well.

“Never Stop Working” is Not a Platitude

A twenty-year study by the Williams Group, tracking 3,200 families, found that 70 per cent of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and 90 per cent lose it by the third.  The study attributes 60 per cent of that failure to communication breakdown, and a further 25 per cent to heirs who were simply never prepared to receive what arrived.  An heir who stops working the day the inheritance lands has removed the one thing that keeps him engaged with money rather than merely spending it.

The Structure Matters More Than the Sum

Prince Rogers Nelson died in 2016 without a will, despite an estate eventually valued at US$156.4 million.  It took six years, over 2,711 court filings, and an estimated US$45 million in legal fees before the estate was finally settled.  Assets, including his own mansion, were sold under litigation pressure, and three of his siblings sold their inherited shares purely to access money they could not otherwise reach.  The difference between an inheritance that lasts and one consumed by the process of distributing is whether there is a structure decided in advance, rather than left for a court to decide after the fact.

A modest inheritance sits comfortably inside a private trust, governed by general trust law and, where a licensed Private Trust Company acts as trustee, by the Trust Companies Act 2005.  There is no requirement to register the trust deed publicly, and no forced heirship rule dictates who must inherit what.

A larger, multi-asset inheritance, spanning property, business interests, and investment portfolios, needs more structural flexibility than a single trust deed offers.  A Variable Capital Company achieves this through its own sub-fund structure, ring-fencing each pool of assets under one umbrella entity, with each sub-fund insulated from the liabilities of the others.  The VCC Act 2018 governs this structure, which is administered by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, with anti-money laundering supervision by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.  At least one director must be ordinarily resident in Singapore, be at least 18 years old, be of legal capacity, and be assessed as a fit and proper person under the Variable Capital Companies Regulations 2020.  An undischarged bankrupt cannot serve.  The VCC must appoint a Permissible Fund Manager to run its underlying property and must issue at least one share, with capital always equal to the fund’s net asset value.  Qualifying for certain tax incentive schemes additionally requires a minimum fund size of S$50 million at application, and annual local business spending of at least S$200,000.

Singapore is also developing a Protected Cell Company regime, though this sits on a different track.  MAS issued a consultation paper on 7th July 2026 proposing a Protected Cell Companies Act, closing for feedback on 7th August 2026, still at the proposal stage rather than enacted law.  The structure comprises a central Core and one or more Cells, with each Cell’s assets and liabilities legally segregated from the others and from the Core.  MAS has scoped the initial framework specifically for captive insurance, insurance-linked securities, and sovereign risk pools, run by MAS-licensed entities.  A family holding property, shares, and investment portfolios for inheritance purposes sits outside that use case.  The VCC remains the Singapore vehicle for segregating general family wealth, while the PCC, once enacted, will serve insurers and risk pool sponsors rather than inheriting families.

The Hartono family’s recent inheritance in Indonesia, over US$11.7 billion split among four heirs, illustrates the scale this kind of structure exists for.  A sum that size, concentrated in a controlling stake in a major bank, cannot simply sit in a personal account waiting for someone to decide what to do with it.

Life Insurance Belongs Inside the Structure, Not Beside It

A trust or a VCC manages the inheritance.  Neither one, by itself, delivers immediate liquidity the moment it is needed.  A life insurance policy, held directly or through the trust itself, funds that gap, paying out independent of how the underlying business or portfolio is performing that month, without triggering probate.  Structured with a staged payout across several years rather than a single lump sum, it also solves the exact failure mode the Williams Group study documented: heirs who receive everything at once, with no preparation and no discipline built into the release schedule.

An inheritance is not made to last by the size of the sum.  It is made to last by the legal structure wrapped around it, matched correctly to its scale, and by whether the person receiving it stays engaged enough to understand what he holds.  Prince’s estate proves what happens with no structure at all.  The Williams Group data proves what happens even with money, when nobody prepared the heir to receive it properly.

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Terence Nunis | Executive Chairman, Equinox Zenith | Author, The 1% Playbook: The Billionaire Cheat Code