INTRODUCTION Contributed by: Ivan A. Sacks, Withers
Global Forces Reshaping Modern Succession and Wealth Transfer As demonstrated by the diverse jurisdictional contri- butions to this year’s inaugural Chambers guide to Succession & Estate Planning, the international land- scape for estate and succession planning is influ- enced by the timeless need to address the age-old certainties of death, taxes and the desire to protect loved ones and pass on lasting legacies in the face of the changing, and at times disruptive, set of cur- rent influences on the world of wealth creation and transition. The laws of estate and succession planning are tradi- tionally jurisdictionally bound, conservative and slow to change, sitting as they do at the intersection of family relationships, property rights and taxation of inheritance. Yet the early decades of the 21st century are producing pressures that are accelerating change in this field. Demographic shifts, increased global mobility and geopolitical uncertainty, regulatory and tax competition among jurisdictions, evolving family structures and the rise of digital wealth are reshaping the scale and nature of wealth transition and the legal environment in which to plan its succession. This in turn is greatly increasing the demands on advisors and wealth owners to plan effectively for the transfer of assets across generations in this changing environ- ment. One of the most significant forces affecting succes- sion planning today is demographic: the so-called great wealth transfer. In the United States alone, tens of trillions of dollars are expected to pass from the baby boom generation to their children and grandchil- dren over the coming two to three decades. Similar transfers are underway in Europe, parts of Asia and Latin America, where post-war generations accu- mulated large concentrations of wealth through real estate, financial markets and closely held businesses. Indeed, some emerging and emerged markets are in the early stages of the most significant private wealth transitions from one generation to the next in at least a century. This generational shift is creating both oppor- tunities and challenges for families – and for the pro- fessionals who advise them. For wealth holders, the question is not merely how assets will pass, but how they will be preserved, governed and deployed by
younger generations whose lifestyles and geographic mobility often differ dramatically from those of their parents. At the same time, this enormous transition of private wealth is intersecting with growing wealth inequality and the desire of governments, and their people, to tax great wealth while at the same time retaining (and attracting) such wealth within their borders. In this environment, jurisdictions around the world – and even individual states within federal systems such as the United States – are increasingly competing to attract private wealth. This competition has produced a wave of innovation in trust law, tax regimes and asset-pro- tection structures. States such as South Dakota, Dela- ware, Nevada and Wyoming in the USA have enacted statutes permitting long-duration or “dynasty” trusts, flexible directed-trust structures and strong protec- tions against creditor claims. Internationally, offshore financial centres and traditional trust jurisdictions have similarly modernised their laws to attract global capi- tal by offering flexible trust structures, confidentiality protections and tax neutrality. Not to be entirely outdone, some high-tax nations, both large and small, are competing to attract people to move to their jurisdiction through special flat-tax or reduced-tax regimes, while others are creating higher walls to escape their income or inheritance taxation for years after a resident leaves their jurisdiction. Notable recent examples of this flurry of legal changes include the United Kingdom, which introduced major changes to its tax regime in 2025 to reduce the length and extent of its longstanding tax-preferential regime for non-domiciled residents, while combining it with longer “tails” for the inheritance taxation of deemed domiciliaries who leave. Representing something of a counter-trend, in the USA, the exemption from fed- eral estate tax has continued to increase since the tax reform in 2017, reaching an all-time high in excess of USD15 million per person (which will continue to grow, indexed for inflation, under current law), and the cur- rent Administration proposes to enact legislation to create a “gold card” to attract very wealthy non-US persons to reside in the USA without subjection to US income tax on their offshore wealth – at least for some period of time.
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