Avoiding 'sudden wealth syndrome'
By Jay MacDonald • Bankrate.com

When Jessie O'Neill was 28, her mother died unexpectedly, leaving her with a windfall of more than $2 million and absolutely no clue how to handle it.

"I was totally unprepared. I felt like I was free-falling, that someone had just pushed me out of this plane and I didn't know if I was going to be able to find the rip cord on the parachute before I hit the ground."

It took her three years of booze, cocaine and wild living in Miami before she got a grip and found advisers she could trust to do the financial work that was beyond her ken. By then, her marriage was history.

Sadder but wiser, O'Neill became a licensed therapist and founded The Affluenza Project to help others get a grip on the whole inheritance tango. Her book, "The Golden Ghetto: The Psychology of Affluence" explores the phenomenon of "affluenza," which she defines as a dysfunctional relationship with money or the pursuit of it.

Like many heirs, O'Neill had some inkling that considerable wealth would one day fall to her; after all, her grandfather was Charles Erwin Wilson, former president of General Motors and secretary of defense under Dwight Eisenhower. But knowing it's coming and being prepared to handle it rarely go hand in hand.

"I liken money to gasoline -- if there's a spark, it's going to explode," she says. "If there is no spark, if a person is well-grounded and not struggling with other problems, then money can be a blessing. But in my case that wasn't true, and in most of my clients' cases that's not true."

How to leave the kids the money without spoiling them, or worse, is understandably high on the midnight worry list of many parents today, according to Elaine Agather, managing director of JP Morgan Private Bank for the South Region.

"The upper estimates are that $136 trillion will pass from one generation to another in the next 50 years," she says. "When we look at what our clients are thinking about, absolutely to the client the biggest concern is family -- how to pass it on without destroying it or how to teach their heirs to take care of it. It's a very emotional, delicate subject."

Yes, you're no doubt thinking: I would hate to be burdened by a couple mil. That's part of the problem: There's no sympathy for the unprepared beneficiaries of the boomers' bundles. As Madonna observed, we are indeed living in a material world, though by now even the Material Girl has learned that what looks like success on the outside can be a prison of doubt and fear on the inside.

"Your relationships change so drastically," O'Neill says. "You go from whatever normal life you had to people wanting to hang around you for all the wrong reasons. Relatives want to borrow money. If you have not been prepared, you just don't handle any of those situations well, and you make poor choices."