When Steve Jobs died in 2011, he left behind not only a legacy but also a great fortune. However, his three children inherited none of it. He believed that wealth would corrupt his children and obstruct good ideas.
When Steve Jobs died in 2011, he left behind not only a legacy in technology and design but also a great fortune:
According to the website uamr.de, his fortune was estimated at around 8.3 billion US dollars at the time of his death. However, he made a consequential decision in his will: his children Reed, Erin, and Eve were not listed as primary heirs to his fortune.
His wife and daughter from another relationship inherit
What happened to the fortune? In his will, he stated that his three children Reed, Erin, and Eve should not inherit his fortune. Instead, all his wealth went to his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, and to Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his oldest daughter from a previous relationship.
Why did Jobs choose such plans? The idea of not passing on a great fortune to one’s own children aligned with a belief he shared with his wife Laurene: wealth should not become a generational problem or an obstacle to personal development. By the way, Laurene Powell Jobs decided to use a large part of the inheritance for social projects.
One daughter inherits nonetheless: An exception is his oldest daughter Lisa, who inherited only around 20 million, just a fraction of the fortune. Jobs had a somewhat difficult relationship with Lisa: for years, Steve Jobs denied being her father, and although he eventually acknowledged her, their relationship remained complicated. Interestingly, Steve Jobs named the first Apple computer “Lisa”. The inheritance that Lisa received could have been an attempt to compensate for the emotional and financial absence of her father over the years.
Many years after Jobs’s death, he is no longer the only person who is against his children inheriting a great fortune. One example is Ken Fisher, who also has a multi-billion dollar fortune. Yet, he has been driving the same car for 25 years. He himself explains that he doesn’t care much about money and material things. And that’s why he also doesn’t want his children to inherit his fortune: He has been driving the same Volvo for 25 years, even though he has a fortune of 11.2 billion euros and does not want his children to inherit everything
