How fast do wealthy families actually lose their money across generations?

Studies suggest 70 percent of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation. And studies suggest 90 percent by the third. This is the shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves three generations pattern, documented across decades of research from Williams and Preisser, RBC Wealth Management, and other family wealth studies. The pattern is consistent globally. The first generation builds, the second tolerates, the third loses it. Kris Kluver, in The Dysfunctional Family Office, points out that the failure is almost never about taxes, governance, or investment performance. Studies suggest over 90 percent of those failures trace back to communication breakdowns, distrust, unprepared heirs, and no shared purpose. Money doesn't disappear because of bad investments. It disappears because the family never learned how to talk to one another.