The Great Wealth Transfer

The largest movement of wealth in American history is underway.
We study how it actually happens.

Over the coming two decades, an estimated $124 trillion will pass between American generations (Cerulli Associates, 2024). It will move through trusts and titles, deeds and filings, certifications and workflows that are rarely studied as a system. The Wealth Transfer Institute researches that infrastructure, publishes what it finds, and convenes the people responsible for making it work.

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Empirical research

Studies of the instruments and systems carrying generational wealth, built on documents and data.

A standing convening

Banking, wealth management, title, law, and technology at one table.

A public record

A curated reading list and data record of the transfer as it unfolds.

About the Institute

We study how wealth actually moves in America.

The Great Wealth Transfer is not one event. It is millions of transactions: a trust funded, a home retitled, an account transferred, an estate settled. Each one moves through paperwork and workflows that receive almost no systematic attention, and when that infrastructure fails, families lose what generations built. The Institute exists to measure that infrastructure and to improve it.

The Institute is not a wealth manager, a family office, or an advisory firm. We hold no assets and advise no families. We study the system itself, and we publish what we find.

I.

Trusts & Entities

How trusts, LLCs, and estates hold and move assets, and where the certification and verification layer breaks down.

II.

Property & Title

Deeds, retitling, and heirs' property: how real estate passes between generations, and how unclear title destroys family wealth.

III.

Filings & Workflows

The tax filings, institutional processes, and operational plumbing through which every transfer must actually clear.

Research

An empirical research program for the transfer.

The Institute publishes empirical studies built on collected documents and measured data, not anecdote. Each study examines one piece of the infrastructure carrying the transfer.

WTI seal
Study No. 1 · August 2026

What everyone gets wrong about trust certifications.

The first empirical study of the most important and overlooked form in American finance: the document every institution demands before trust-held money can move. Built on a purpose-assembled library of trust certification forms collected from institutions across the country, a collection that grows every month.

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Disclosure: the Institute is a research division of Six Clerks, Inc., which builds trust certification infrastructure for financial institutions. Our studies state their methodology, sources, and data so readers can test the findings independently.

The research agenda

Further studies in progress across the Institute's three pillars, drawing on a document collection that grows continuously.

Contribute

Institutions are invited to contribute forms, documents, and data to the collection, in confidence and under NDA where required, to sharpen the public record.

Engage

Researchers, academics, and journalists are invited to engage with the data, challenge the findings, and propose the next questions.

The Wealth Transfer Digest

The reading list for the largest wealth transfer in American history.

Each month the Institute curates the essential research, reporting, and data on the Great Wealth Transfer: what is moving, what is breaking, and who is building. Members receive the Digest alongside the Institute's ongoing research findings.

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Leadership

Directed from inside the infrastructure it studies.

Benjamin D. Spohn
Executive Director

Ben has spent his career where trusts, entities, and real property meet the practical world, counseling financial institutions and real estate clients through the transactions that move wealth. He founded Six Clerks, Inc. to rebuild the trust certification layer, established the Institute as its research division, and remains founder and owner of Spohn Law, PC.

The Advisory Board.  The Institute is assembling a small board spanning banking operations, wealth management, title, law, and technology to steer its research agenda and headline its convenings. Inquiries are welcome: ben@greatwealthtransferinstitute.org