Every era believes its wealth transfer is unprecedented; this one happens to be right. UBS estimates that roughly USD 83 trillion will pass between generations over the next two decades — a movement of capital that will reshape families, firms and entire capital markets. Against that backdrop, the succession chapter of the UBS Global Family Office Report 2026 makes uncomfortable reading. Among 307 surveyed family offices — institutions purpose-built to steward dynastic wealth — 57% have a wealth succession plan for family members. Fewer than four in ten have a succession plan for the family office itself. And just 27% maintain any organized process to educate and prepare the next generation for the roles they will inherit.
The mechanics of the gap are visible in the participation data. There is near-consensus on timing: family offices overwhelmingly regard ages 30 to 39 as right for the next generation to begin engaging in decisions, with preparation and education ideally starting between 18 and 29. UBS's parallel research among heirs themselves finds most believe wealth conversations should begin before age 20. Yet 21% of family offices admit that heirs old enough to participate currently have no involvement at all — and in Europe the figure reaches 31%. The barriers cited are rarely about capability. They are gaps in financial and governance education, and — more delicately — a current generation not yet willing to share the controls.
Documents are not succession
The report's deeper lesson is that succession fails in the space between paperwork and people. A will, a shareholders' agreement and a trust deed answer the question of who receives what. They are silent on whether the recipient can read a balance sheet, chair a board meeting, evaluate a manager, or say no to a persuasive stranger. Governance maturity elsewhere in the survey makes the imbalance stark: 68% of family offices run formal financial performance measurement, 60% maintain investment committees, 58% budget annually — the investment machinery is professional. The human machinery is not. As one of the report's family advisers observes, what looks like next-generation disinterest is very often a gap in empowerment: heirs who were never given a meaningful seat learn to stop asking for one.
Encouragingly, awareness is rising. Among offices where the next generation is not yet fully involved, 52% intend to introduce financial education or training; around two fifths are considering seats in investment committee meetings or backing next-generation entrepreneurial ventures; a third plan engagement through philanthropy. These are exactly the right instruments, because they convert wealth from an inheritance into an apprenticeship. A structured venture allocation teaches diligence with real consequences. A committee seat teaches how decisions are argued and owned. Philanthropy teaches purpose — the ingredient that, in our experience, most reliably separates stewards from spenders.
Structure is the silent teacher
There is a second, less discussed dimension: the legal architecture a family builds is itself a succession instrument. A tangle of personally held assets across three countries transfers chaos; a clean holding structure transfers a system. When shares in a single holding company — governed by a family charter, with clear classes and reserved matters — are what passes between generations, the heirs inherit not just value but an operating manual. Jurisdiction choice compounds the effect. Neither of our two home jurisdictions levies inheritance tax — a point we examined in our UAE–Georgia comparison — and stable regimes with modern registries, like the Georgian system we described in our review of Georgia’s business environment, remove entire categories of future friction. The 88% of family offices that bank across multiple jurisdictions understand this: resilience for the next generation is designed, not hoped for.
The family dimension matters too. Succession is not only about capital; it is about where the family itself will live, learn and belong. Residency planning — a golden visa in the Emirates, a residence strategy in Georgia, schooling decisions of the kind we mapped in our essay on raising a family in Georgia — is succession planning by another name. The next generation that grows up with genuine optionality across jurisdictions inherits something no trust deed can convey: the ability to move, adapt and rebuild.
A family firm's view of family succession
We read this chapter differently from most advisers, because Polaris is itself a family-founded firm: two co-founders, one household, one shared enterprise now spanning two licensed jurisdictions. We have sat on the client's side of the succession table. That experience shapes a simple conviction: the best succession plans are boringly concrete. Name the roles, not just the beneficiaries. Put heirs in real decisions with real budgets years before control passes. Write the family charter while everyone still likes each other. And build the structure so that the day of transfer is an administrative event, not a legal expedition across five jurisdictions.
A succession plan that lives in a drawer protects no one. The families that succeed treat the handover as a decade-long apprenticeship, not a signature.— Olena Kysla, Co-Founder & General Manager, Polaris Corporate Services
- Roughly USD 83 trillion will transfer between generations over the next two decades, per UBS research.
- 57% of family offices have a family wealth succession plan — but only 35% have one for the family office itself, and just 27% formally prepare the next generation.
- Consensus timing: preparation should start at 18–29, active involvement at 30–39; yet 21% of old-enough heirs remain entirely uninvolved.
- Remedies gaining ground: financial education (52% plan it), investment committee seats, backing heirs' ventures, and philanthropy-based engagement.
- Clean holding structures in no-inheritance-tax jurisdictions turn succession from a legal expedition into an administrative event.
Polaris Perspective
Polaris designs succession the way this report implicitly recommends: structure first, people alongside. We build holding architectures whose shares — not scattered assets — are what future generations receive, coordinate cross-border tax planning so the handover triggers no avoidable cost across the UAE, Georgia, Cyprus and Switzerland, and support family relocation and residency so the next generation holds real geographic options. As a family-founded firm licensed in two jurisdictions, we advise on succession from the inside of the experience — not the outside of a textbook.