How Much Money Will Bill Gates' Children Inherit?

Ah, Bill Gates! A perennial presence near the top of the Forbes list of billionaires, the co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, a prolific investor, and the co-founder of some small company called Microsoft that you may or may not have heard of. As SF Gate tells us, he's also the father of three children, and boy, those kids must have it pretty easy. Gates is worth a whopping $106 billion, so imagine the trust funds his offspring get to spend their way through. That's just the beginning, too — one day, even one of the wealthiest men in the world will fall prey to the inevitabilities of mortal coil, and that's when the world "inheritance" comes at play. Say, how many billions do you think each of his children will inherit?   

Strangely enough, it looks like Bill Gates' children aren't going to inherit very much at all, as Gates is planning to leave the vast majority of his fortune to charity instead. The billionaire feels this is the right call, because it allows (and, let's be fair, forces) the kids to find their own way in life instead of lounging by the pool and counting daddy Gates' inheritance money for the rest of their days. "It's not a favor to kids to have them have huge sums of wealth," Gates has said. "It distorts anything they might do, creating their own path." According to Gates, his children fully understand this and are actually quite pleased with their parents' commitment to charitable causes such as "reducing extreme poverty." 

In all fairness, it's not like Gates is going to leave his descendants entirely without inheritance, let alone financial support. He's paying for their education and intends to set them up with "some money," ensuring that even though they might never be billionaires like their dad, they'll probably never, ever miss a meal.