wealthmanagement.com
By Tara Anne Pleat
August 5th, 2026
Aging Costs Are Eating into Family Wealth— Unless legislative changes are made, heirs may not get their expected inheritances…
A recent article in The Washington Post, “As the Cost of Aging Soars, Families’ Wealth is Evaporating,” posited that despite all the hype about the “Great Wealth Transfer,” which predicts that $69 trillion to $84 trillion will change hands over the next two decades from baby boomers to their descendants, the cost of aging will eat into what heirs will actually inherit.
The article identifies a common problem that elder law and special needs attorneys see every day: The United States has never developed a sustainable and clearly understood framework for allocating the costs of long-term care among individuals, families, insurers and public programs. Our current system relies first on personal resources, private insurance and family caregiving, with Medicaid serving as the payer of last resort after an individual satisfies its financial eligibility rules.
The projected “great wealth transfer” may therefore become far more concentrated among families who are wealthy enough to absorb years of care costs without exhausting their assets.
LTC is expensive, unpredictable and often prolonged. Many people enter retirement believing that Medicare will cover LTC if they eventually need it. By the time they learn otherwise, insurance may no longer be available, and meaningful planning opportunities may have passed. Legislation should recognize that LTC is a foreseeable but unevenly distributed financial risk that cannot always be managed through personal savings alone.
