The statistics on wealth transfer are well documented. An estimated $84 trillion will pass between generations over the next two decades. Family offices have spent years building the governance frameworks, legal structures, and investment strategies that make that transfer as smooth as possible.

What most have not built is an understanding of what happens when the heir is autistic, has ADHD, or carries a neurodivergent profile that was never factored into the succession plan.

The gap nobody talks about

Family office advisory teams are highly capable in their disciplines. They understand trust structures, tax efficiency, cross-border complexity, and the interpersonal dynamics that make wealth transfer difficult even under straightforward circumstances.

What they are rarely equipped to address is the question of capacity — not in the legal sense, which is typically managed through formal assessment and appropriate trust structures — but in the practical sense. How does this heir best receive information? What communication style works for them and what doesn’t? What does a governance meeting look like when one participant processes information differently, finds open-ended discussion overwhelming, or needs more time and structure than the standard board format assumes?

These are not marginal questions. They are the questions that determine whether a succession plan that looks correct on paper actually functions in practice.

What neurodivergence actually means for succession

The range is wide. A beneficiary with ADHD may have exceptional pattern recognition and strategic instinct but find it genuinely difficult to sit through a two-hour quarterly review, review lengthy written reports, or manage the administrative weight of a directorship. A beneficiary with autism may have deep expertise in a specific area and a clear sense of what they value, but find the relationship management and political navigation of a family board deeply uncomfortable. A beneficiary with significant anxiety may avoid the conversations that need to happen simply because the stakes feel too high to approach directly.

None of these things preclude meaningful participation in wealth governance. All of them require the advisory team to think differently about how that participation is structured.

The family offices that are getting this right are not doing anything radical. They are doing three things. They are taking time to understand the specific individual — not autism in general, but this person, their strengths, their communication preferences, their relationship with the wealth they are being asked to steward. They are adjusting the format of governance to create conditions in which that person can genuinely participate rather than merely attend. And they are introducing specialist support at the right moment — not as a crisis intervention, but as a proactive part of the succession infrastructure.

The legal dimension

There is a specific point worth addressing directly. Neurodivergence is not the same as lacking capacity. The majority of neurodivergent individuals have full legal capacity to manage their affairs, enter contracts, and make decisions about their wealth. Conflating neurodivergence with incapacity is both inaccurate and potentially harmful — it removes agency from people who are entitled to exercise it.

Where capacity is a genuine concern, separate and specific legal assessment is the appropriate route, conducted with proper process and appropriate sensitivity. It is not something to be assumed on the basis of a diagnosis.

The advisory question for most family offices is not whether a neurodivergent heir can participate in wealth governance. It is how to structure that participation so it actually works.

Transition to adulthood

The period between eighteen and twenty-five is where most of the practical difficulty concentrates. A young adult who is neurodivergent is navigating a simultaneous set of pressures — establishing independence, managing new environments, often managing a diagnosis that was identified late or not fully understood — at exactly the point when family offices begin to introduce them to the responsibilities they will eventually carry.

The timing is rarely ideal. The conversations happen because they need to, not because the young person is necessarily ready. And without specific thought about how those conversations are structured, they can go badly in ways that set the tone for decades.

What helps is introduction that is gradual, honest, and adapted to the individual. Meetings that are prepared in advance with clear agendas. Written summaries that allow processing time rather than requiring real-time response. A trusted intermediary — someone who knows both the family’s financial world and the young person’s communication style — who can help bridge the gap between the advisory team’s language and the heir’s actual experience.

What good looks like

The family offices making the most progress in this area share a few characteristics. They have advisors who are willing to acknowledge what they do not know about neurodivergence and to seek specialist input rather than assuming their existing skills cover it. They treat succession planning for a neurodivergent heir as a specific workstream that requires specific preparation, not a variation on a standard process. And they involve the heir themselves in designing the format of their participation — asking what works, what doesn’t, and what they would need to feel genuinely engaged rather than managed.

The families who get this right tend to find that a neurodivergent heir, properly supported and appropriately included, brings something distinctive to the governance of wealth. A different way of assessing risk. A different relationship with convention. A capacity for focus and pattern recognition that, in the right structure, is a genuine asset.

The families who get it wrong tend to find that the heir disengages — not from a lack of interest or capability, but from a lack of a structure that works for them. And disengagement from a succession process, once established, is difficult to reverse.

Where Luma fits

Luma works with family offices and their advisors to provide the specialist layer that most advisory teams cannot provide in-house. We help families think through what meaningful participation looks like for a specific neurodivergent heir, advise on how governance formats might be adapted, and provide ongoing support to the individual and the family through the transition to adulthood and beyond.

If this is a question your family office is navigating — whether for a current client or within your own family — we are happy to talk it through. The first conversation is private and carries no obligation.