From investing icon Warren Buffett to Hollywood superstar Daniel Craig, celebrities have been making headlines in recent months by revealing that they don't intend to leave their massive fortunes to their children.
Kevin O'Leary, O'Shares ETFs chairman and judge on CNBC's new show "Money Court," shares a similar distaste for inheritances. In fact, O'Leary doesn't plan to leave any inheritance to his children, he tells CNBC Make It. Instead, he used his wealth to create a trust to take care of his family — but only to a certain point.
When he earned his first substantial sum of money, "I sat down with the estate planners and built a generational skipping trust that provides for any child in my family from birth to the last day of college and then zero," O'Leary says.
O'Leary says that he chose to do this out of a desire to not "curse" his children by taking away their need to work hard and find their own career success.
"No free lunch, it's just the wrong thing to do," O'Leary says. "You curse a child when you de-risk their lives. But that doesn't mean you can't help them. And listen, if [my son] ever has a kid, that trust is going to take care of that child from birth to the last day of college."
O'Leary says he learned the value of hard work from his mother, who told him she would no longer support him financially once he graduated from college.
"She hated entitlement. She thought if you made it so that if [kids] didn't have to work, they wouldn't," O'Leary says. "And I think she's right. Many people today know examples of rich, spoiled children who don't care about pursuing a career and have no reason to do so because their life has been entirely de-risked."
