St. Ignatius of Loyola offers family offices and ultra-high-net-worth families one of history’s most compelling models of personal transformation, institutional design, disciplined decision-making, and mission-driven legacy.

His life began within privilege. Born in 1491 into minor Basque nobility as the youngest of thirteen children, Ignatius was formed in a culture that prized honour, social standing, military achievement, appearance, and courtly recognition. As a young man, he pursued romance, gambling, fighting, glory, and advancement. His imagination was occupied by the question, How can I become more admired?

That question is not entirely foreign to wealthy families.

The modern equivalents may be a larger transaction, a more prestigious address, a trophy asset, a celebrated investment, a prominent board appointment, a highly publicized donation, or admission into an increasingly exclusive social circle. None of these things is necessarily wrong. The danger arises when recognition becomes the family’s hidden governing purpose.

Ignatius’s great lesson is that ambition does not have to be destroyed. It must be converted.

The same courage that once drove him toward military distinction was eventually directed toward service. The same intensity that made him pursue worldly glory later enabled him to endure years of study, establish a new religious order, form leaders, develop a rigorous method of discernment, and help create an educational tradition that would outlive him by centuries.

For a family office, this is the central Ignatian question:

Will wealth remain an instrument of self-importance, or will it become an instrument of higher purpose?

Every wealthy family eventually faces a “cannonball moment”

Ignatius’s transformation began with an event he did not choose.

During the Battle of Pamplona in 1521, he refused to surrender despite overwhelming French forces. A cannonball shattered his leg, ending the military future he had imagined for himself. During his long recovery at Loyola, he asked for stories of chivalry but was instead given books about Christ and the saints. He noticed that fantasies of worldly achievement left him empty, while thoughts of living for a greater purpose produced a deeper and more lasting energy. This became an early foundation of his approach to discernment.

Every multigenerational family eventually experiences its own cannonball moment.

It may be:

• the death or incapacity of a founder;
• the sale of a family business;
• a health crisis;
• a market collapse;
• a lawsuit or public scandal;
• a family estrangement;
• an addiction or personal failure;
• a cyberattack;
• the loss of a trusted executive;
• a succession dispute;
• or the realization that the next generation does not want the life designed for it.

Such events reveal the difference between financial resilience and genuine family resilience. A family may possess billions of dollars and still be emotionally, spiritually, relationally, or institutionally unprepared for disruption.

The ordinary response is to restore the previous arrangement as quickly as possible. Ignatius suggests a more courageous response: before rebuilding, ask whether the old arrangement deserves to be rebuilt.

A liquidity event, for example, should not merely trigger tax planning, asset allocation, insurance reviews, and new holding structures. It should create a period of reflection in which the family asks:

Who are we now that the business no longer defines us?

What did the enterprise give our family besides money?

Which values were genuine, and which were merely part of the founder’s mythology?

What responsibilities have arrived with this new freedom?

What should the next chapter make possible?

The family office should therefore create a formal “cannonball protocol” for major transitions. Before irreversible decisions are made, the family pauses, gathers reliable information, identifies emotional pressures, consults independent advisers, revisits its purpose, and distinguishes urgent action from anxious action.

The wound may still hurt. But it can also open a door that comfort kept closed.

Convert ambition instead of pretending it does not exist

After his injury, Ignatius did not become passive, indifferent, or incapable of leadership. His ambition was redirected from personal fame toward a mission larger than himself.

This distinction matters for UHNW families because discussions of stewardship sometimes become suspicious of excellence, growth, influence, or commercial success. Yet wealth rarely survives through timidity. Family enterprises require conviction, calculated risk, persistence, strategic intelligence, negotiation, and disciplined execution.

The problem is not ambition itself. The problem is ambition without an ordered purpose.

An Ignatian family office does not tell entrepreneurial family members to stop building. It asks them to examine what they are building, why they are building it, who may be harmed by it, and what kind of person the building process is turning them into.

A founder may be capable of creating another billion-dollar enterprise. The deeper question is whether doing so is the best use of the founder’s remaining years, relationships, influence, and health.

A next-generation family member may want to establish an investment company, foundation, fashion brand, technology venture, film studio, or social enterprise. The family should not dismiss the aspiration merely because it differs from the original business. Nor should it fund the project simply to avoid conflict. It should help the individual clarify motive, competence, accountability, service, and long-term value.

Ignatian stewardship does not extinguish fire. It gives the fire a worthy direction.

Wealth must be treated as a means, never as the family’s final end

At the heart of Ignatian thought is the principle that created things are gifts to be used according to whether they help a person fulfil the purpose for which he or she was created. Possessions, health, reputation, influence, and opportunity are not ultimate ends. They are instruments.

This changes the basic philosophy of a family office.

A conventional family office may ask, “How do we preserve and grow the assets?”

An Ignatian family office asks, “What are the assets meant to make possible, and how much preservation or growth is necessary to accomplish that purpose?”

The first question is technical. The second is teleological: it concerns the family’s ultimate direction.

Without such clarity, preservation becomes an endless project. The family accumulates structures, committees, properties, custodians, advisers, policies, insurance contracts, trusts, foundations, investment vehicles, and reporting systems without knowing what all this machinery is supposed to serve.

Capital preservation is important, but preservation alone is not a legacy. A museum preserves objects. A family must form people, sustain relationships, exercise responsibility, and create value for others.

A meaningful family wealth philosophy might declare that capital exists to:

• support the flourishing and responsible freedom of family members;
• maintain appropriate security without encouraging dependency;
• develop each generation’s gifts and judgment;
• protect vulnerable family members;
• invest patiently in productive enterprises;
• strengthen communities;
• support education, health, culture, faith, or humanitarian work;
• preserve stories and values;
• and provide future generations with opportunity rather than entitlement.

Once the purpose is clear, every major asset can be tested against it.

Does this operating company serve the family’s mission?

Does this investment align with the family’s principles?

Does this estate unite the family or burden it?

Does this foundation create measurable good or mainly preserve the donor’s name?

Does this trust develop maturity or indefinitely subsidize immaturity?

Does this family office simplify life or make the family dependent upon an increasingly complex bureaucracy?

The Ignatian approach does not assume that wealth is bad. It insists that wealth remain subordinate.

Discernment is a superior form of family-office decision architecture

While living near Manresa, Ignatius reflected on his interior experiences and began developing the material that became the Spiritual Exercises. These meditations and practices were ultimately designed to cultivate attentiveness, openness, freedom, and responsiveness to God. They were first published in 1548.

For a family office, the Spiritual Exercises offer more than private devotion. They suggest a disciplined architecture for consequential decisions.

Wealthy families often assume that more information automatically leads to better choices. But family-office failures are frequently caused not by a lack of information, but by hidden attachments.

A principal may be attached to appearing decisive.

A founder may be attached to retaining control.

An investment committee may be attached to a manager it previously recommended.

A child may be attached to proving independence.

A trustee may be attached to avoiding criticism.

An executive may be attached to preserving a role.

A family may be attached to a property because it symbolizes a past that no longer exists.

These attachments distort judgment. They cause people to gather evidence selectively, ignore dissent, defend sunk costs, confuse emotional comfort with prudence, and treat honest disagreement as disloyalty.

An Ignatian decision process begins by naming the decision’s proper end. The family then identifies the fears, loyalties, ambitions, resentments, and status concerns that might interfere with freedom. It studies the facts, considers alternatives, seeks qualified counsel, listens to affected stakeholders, and observes the deeper effects that each option produces.

The family should ask not merely, “Does this opportunity excite us?” but:

Does the excitement come from genuine alignment or from vanity, urgency, rivalry, and fear of missing out?

Not merely, “Can we afford this?” but:

What will owning this require from our time, attention, relationships, reputation, and future flexibility?

Not merely, “What return could we earn?” but:

What assumptions must be true, what could cause permanent loss, and what conduct are we indirectly financing?

Not merely, “Is this legal?” but:

Would we be comfortable explaining the full arrangement to our children, employees, partners, and community?

This form of discernment is particularly valuable in private equity, venture capital, direct lending, real estate development, cross-border structuring, philanthropy, artificial intelligence, and family governance, where decisions frequently involve incomplete information and competing goods.

A spreadsheet can calculate expected return. It cannot determine what the family should desire.

Freedom from attachment is not indifference to outcomes

Ignatian “indifference” is easily misunderstood. It does not mean apathy, passivity, or carelessness. It means enough interior freedom to choose what best serves the family’s true purpose rather than what protects ego, comfort, or appearance.

For wealthy families, this is a rare and valuable form of freedom.

A family that is excessively attached to reputation may conceal problems until they become crises.

A founder attached to a company may refuse an attractive sale even when the business requires a different owner.

A family attached to historic real estate may spend enormous amounts maintaining properties that no one wants to use.

An investment committee attached to its own intelligence may double down on a failed thesis instead of admitting error.

A philanthropist attached to public recognition may direct funds toward visible projects rather than urgent but less glamorous needs.

A family office attached to complexity may preserve redundant trusts, corporations, partnerships, bank accounts, mandates, and reporting systems because simplification would expose how little strategic value some of them provide.

Ignatian freedom allows the family to retain or sell, build or stop, expand or contract, speak or remain quiet, lead or step aside—according to what the mission requires.

This is not a rejection of conviction. It is the removal of captivity.

The family’s “greater purpose” must be more compelling than greater consumption

Ignatius and the Jesuit tradition are associated with Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam—for the greater glory of God—and with the desire to “find God in all things.”

For a Christian family, this establishes a clear hierarchy: financial capital must serve God, human dignity, family responsibility, justice, and the common good.

For families with mixed religious commitments, the governance lesson remains accessible. A durable legacy requires a purpose greater than the appetites of the present generation.

Without a higher purpose, each generation will interpret wealth primarily through personal preference. One generation builds it, another enjoys it, another divides it, and another wonders why so much conflict surrounds something that was supposed to create freedom.

The family mission must therefore be specific enough to guide choices. Statements such as “preserve the legacy,” “make a difference,” or “remain united” sound agreeable but provide little direction.

A stronger mission might say:

Our family will steward its financial, intellectual, relational, and reputational capital to develop capable and compassionate family members, invest in productive enterprises, strengthen the communities in which we operate, and pass opportunity and responsibility—not entitlement—to future generations.

Such a mission can guide portfolio policy, distribution standards, education, philanthropy, succession, hiring, and family conduct.

The family office then becomes more than an administrative centre. It becomes the institutional steward of the family’s declared purpose.

Reflection and action must remain together

Ignatian spirituality is often described through the idea of being contemplative in action: reflection should shape conduct, and experience should return the person to deeper reflection. Jesuit sources continue to describe this integration of spiritual attentiveness with active work in the world.

Family offices need the same rhythm.

Some families act constantly but rarely reflect. Their calendars are full of transactions, committee meetings, property decisions, manager presentations, tax planning, travel, charitable events, and family obligations. Activity creates the impression of progress even when the family’s direction is unclear.

Other families reflect indefinitely but avoid difficult action. They discuss values, governance, family harmony, succession, and philanthropy but postpone decisions that might generate disagreement.

Ignatian stewardship joins the two.

A family council should not be merely a ceremonial gathering. It should produce clear responsibilities and decisions.

An investment committee should not only review performance. It should examine where its reasoning was sound or weak.

A philanthropic retreat should not end with inspiring language. It should result in focused priorities, due-diligence standards, funding commitments, and methods of learning.

A succession plan should not remain in a binder. Potential successors should receive progressively more responsibility while the current leader is still able to guide them.

A practical rhythm might include quarterly strategy reviews, an annual family retreat, post-investment reviews, next-generation formation sessions, regular governance evaluations, and structured reflection after significant successes or failures.

The family office must create space to think without allowing reflection to become an elegant form of avoidance.

A family’s most important investment is the formation of people

After studying in Paris, Ignatius formed a small community with Francis Xavier, Peter Faber, and other companions. Their commitments eventually became the Society of Jesus, formally recognized in 1540. Education soon emerged as one of the Society’s most important forms of service.

This is one of the clearest lessons for UHNW families: institutions endure when they form people capable of carrying the mission forward.

The statistics included in older summaries of Jesuit life vary, but the scale remains remarkable. Current official Jesuit sources report more than 16,000 Jesuits worldwide. The broader educational network includes thousands of schools and initiatives, while the Jesuit higher-education network comprises more than 200 institutions serving over one million students.

Ignatius’s enduring impact did not come from transferring a personal fortune. It came from creating a repeatable system of formation.

That distinction should reshape family legacy planning.

Many families devote extensive attention to the transfer of capital but comparatively little to the formation of beneficiaries. They design sophisticated trusts for people who have never been taught how to read a balance sheet, evaluate an adviser, understand risk, manage conflict, exercise restraint, or articulate a personal vocation.

The result is structurally protected wealth held by psychologically unprepared owners.

A next-generation development program should include financial literacy, investment fundamentals, family history, enterprise education, philanthropy, ethics, communication, governance, cybersecurity, geopolitical awareness, artificial-intelligence literacy, and supervised real-world experience.

But education must go beyond technical competence.

Jesuit education emphasizes formation of the whole person—intellectual, moral, relational, and spiritual development—not simply the production of technically capable graduates.

Likewise, a family should not be satisfied because a future beneficiary understands portfolio theory. The person must also learn patience, empathy, responsibility, courage, self-knowledge, service, and judgment.

The objective is not merely to prepare heirs to manage assets.

It is to prepare human beings who can be trusted with freedom.

Begin with a small group of aligned people

Ignatius did not begin with a vast institution. He began with a small group of companions whose relationships were grounded in shared conviction.

This offers an important lesson for family-office staffing and governance.

Wealthy families are often attracted to impressive résumés, prominent firms, elite credentials, and sophisticated presentations. Expertise matters. But technical brilliance without alignment can introduce fragmentation, politics, opacity, and competing agendas.

The strongest family-office team is not necessarily the largest or most prestigious. It is the team whose members understand the family’s purpose, respect appropriate boundaries, tell the truth, collaborate without territorial behaviour, and place the family’s long-term welfare above the protection of their own mandates.

The chief investment officer, legal counsel, tax adviser, estate planner, philanthropy director, family-governance adviser, cybersecurity specialist, and external managers should not function as isolated centres of influence. They should operate as companions in a common mission, with clearly defined authority and transparent accountability.

For a family office in Vancouver, New York, London, Zurich, Singapore, Hong Kong, or Dubai, the governance structures may differ. The principle does not: institutional coherence begins with shared purpose.

Global reach requires cultural intelligence

The early Jesuits understood their work as a mission carried into the world. They travelled across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and other regions, sometimes adapting to local languages and customs rather than assuming that one cultural expression would work everywhere.

Global families require similar cultural intelligence.

A family with members in Canada, the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia cannot assume that one governance method, communication style, tax structure, educational model, or philanthropic strategy will translate perfectly across every location.

Legal systems differ. Religious assumptions differ. Attitudes toward hierarchy, privacy, inheritance, gender, entrepreneurship, elders, philanthropy, and public visibility differ. Even the meaning of “family unity” can vary among cultures and generations.

The family needs consistent principles but flexible applications.

This means establishing a global family constitution while allowing regional governance practices where appropriate. It means coordinating tax and estate planning without letting technical structures dictate family relationships. It means understanding local communities before launching philanthropic projects. It means preparing next-generation members to operate across cultures without becoming detached from their roots.

Global sophistication is not demonstrated by owning assets in many countries.

It is demonstrated by knowing how to act responsibly within them.

Clear authority protects the mission from personality

Ignatius understood that a worldwide mission could not depend entirely on informal friendship. It required constitutions, formation, authority, communication, and accountability.

Families often resist formal governance because they associate it with bureaucracy or mistrust. Yet unclear authority usually produces more politics, not less.

When decision rights are vague, family members lobby privately. Executives build personal alliances. Trustees avoid action. Advisers offer overlapping recommendations. Founders intervene unpredictably. Adult children do not know whether they are owners, employees, beneficiaries, observers, or future leaders.

An Ignatian approach places the mission above personalities and defines who has the authority to decide.

The family council should govern family matters.

The board should govern the operating enterprise.

Trustees should administer trusts according to their duties.

The investment committee should operate within an approved investment policy.

The family-office chief executive should run the organization within delegated authority.

Individual family members should understand where they may advise, where they may vote, and where they must accept a legitimate decision with which they disagree.

This is not blind obedience. All authority must remain bounded by law, fiduciary responsibility, conscience, transparency, and appropriate challenge. But perpetual ambiguity is not freedom. It is fertile soil for conflict.

Humility is an institutional risk-control mechanism

In a homily for the feast of St. Ignatius, Pope Francis emphasized moving away from self-centredness, serving rather than placing oneself at the centre, and cultivating humility about personal limitations.

For family offices, humility is not merely a private virtue. It is a form of risk management.

Humility allows an investment team to admit that a thesis was wrong.

It allows a founder to recognize that leadership capacity is declining.

It allows a successor to ask for help.

It allows an adviser to disclose a mistake promptly.

It allows a family to examine the harmful parts of its history.

It allows a philanthropist to listen to communities rather than impose a preferred solution.

It allows the family office to distinguish genuine expertise from confident performance.

Families that cannot admit error become structurally fragile. Problems remain hidden because everyone learns that protecting the family’s image is more important than communicating reality.

A healthy culture rewards early truth.

Investment losses, failed ventures, personal difficulties, cybersecurity incidents, compliance concerns, and relationship conflicts should be surfaced while they are still manageable. This requires leaders who respond to bad news with curiosity and accountability rather than humiliation and retaliation.

The family that believes it is incapable of error is already in danger.

Do not allow the founder to become the permanent centre

Many family enterprises begin through the vision and endurance of a dominant founder. The founder’s role deserves gratitude and honour. But founder-centred systems are difficult to transfer because every relationship, decision, and exception depends upon one person.

Ignatius created an institution whose mission could continue without his physical presence. That is a deeper form of legacy than personal indispensability.

A founder who genuinely wants the family enterprise or family office to endure must gradually move from being the centre of every decision to being the architect of a durable system.

This requires:

• documenting values and decision principles;
• transferring relationships;
• developing successors;
• permitting others to make meaningful decisions;
• separating ownership from management;
• defining emergency authority;
• creating independent challenge;
• and accepting that the next generation will express the mission differently.

The objective is not to reproduce the founder’s personality. It is to preserve the family’s purpose while allowing capable successors to respond to circumstances the founder could never have predicted.

A legacy that requires the founder’s permanent control is not yet a legacy. It is an unfinished dependency.

The family story should include wounds, failures, and redemption

Ignatius’s early conduct was not erased from his story. His vanity, violence, romantic pursuits, gambling, and desire for glory provide the contrast that makes his transformation meaningful. Official Jesuit accounts openly describe these aspects of his youth.

Family histories are often polished until they become unbelievable.

The founder is presented as perfectly wise. Difficult relatives disappear from the narrative. Ethical compromises are minimized. Failed ventures are omitted. Family sacrifices are romanticized. Employees and partners who contributed to success receive little recognition.

This creates a brittle legacy because later generations eventually discover that the official story was incomplete.

An honest family history can acknowledge both achievement and failure. It can explain how the family learned, repaired harm, changed direction, or failed to change when it should have.

Redemption is more formative than perfection.

A next-generation family member who struggles should know that belonging does not depend upon maintaining a flawless public image. At the same time, compassion must not eliminate accountability. Ignatius did not merely reinterpret his past. He changed his conduct.

The family’s message should be: mistakes can be confessed, repaired, and transformed—but they cannot be hidden indefinitely or excused by wealth.

Simplification can be an act of freedom

After recovering, Ignatius left behind his sword and expensive clothing as visible signs that his former identity would no longer govern him. At Manresa, he lived simply, served vulnerable people, and developed the foundations of the Spiritual Exercises.

UHNW families may not be called to abandon all possessions, but they often need the freedom to reduce complexity.

Luxury becomes burdensome when every possession requires staff, security, maintenance, travel coordination, insurance, legal structures, and emotional negotiation. At some point, the family no longer owns the assets; the assets organize the family’s life.

A periodic complexity audit can examine:

• unused residences;
• duplicated entities;
• fragmented custody relationships;
• legacy investment accounts;
• outdated insurance arrangements;
• overlapping advisers;
• aircraft, yachts, collections, and vehicles with low family value;
• philanthropic programs without strategic relevance;
• and family-office services that create dependence rather than capability.

The question is not simply, “Can we maintain this?”

It is, “Does maintaining this still contribute to the life we are trying to live?”

Purposeful simplicity is not a rejection of beauty, comfort, or excellence. It is the refusal to let excess consume the attention required for more important things.

Philanthropy should form relationships, not manufacture reputation

Ignatius’s mission was expressed through service, education, accompaniment, and institution building. The Jesuit tradition later developed extensive work in schools, universities, parishes, social services, dialogue, justice, and care for vulnerable communities.

For wealthy families, philanthropy should therefore be more than reputational decoration or a mechanism for giving children something respectable to discuss.

Serious philanthropy asks the family to listen, learn, remain accountable, and build relationships with people whose experiences differ from its own.

The family may contribute funding, networks, strategic knowledge, technology, property, or convening power. But it should resist assuming that wealth automatically produces wisdom about social problems.

An Ignatian philanthropic process begins with attention. It seeks to understand the people affected, the causes beneath the visible symptoms, the work already being done, and the unintended consequences that outside intervention might create.

This approach favours patient partnership over ceremonial generosity.

It also recognizes that giving should transform the giver. If philanthropy leaves the family’s assumptions, habits, relationships, and understanding entirely unchanged, something important may be missing.

Ignatian discernment is especially relevant in the age of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can process documents, identify patterns, model portfolios, summarize meetings, evaluate contracts, automate reporting, monitor risks, and generate recommendations. It can make a family office faster and more informed.

It cannot relieve the family of moral responsibility.

AI systems may optimize for the objective they are given without questioning whether that objective is wise. They may reproduce bias, present uncertain conclusions confidently, overlook context, or encourage decision-makers to outsource judgment.

Ignatian discernment gives the family office a human framework for governing AI-enabled decisions.

Before using an AI recommendation, the decision-maker should ask:

What objective did we instruct the system to optimize?

What information was included or excluded?

Who may be affected but is not represented in the data?

What assumptions are hidden in the model?

What evidence would cause us to reject the output?

Who remains personally accountable for the final decision?

Does the proposed action serve the family’s stated purpose, or merely increase speed, scale, and convenience?

The family office should require material AI-assisted decisions to remain reviewable, explainable, challengeable, and attributable to a responsible human being.

Ignatius teaches that good judgment requires more than calculation. It requires self-knowledge, freedom from disordered attachment, awareness of consequences, and fidelity to a proper end.

Those qualities become more important—not less—as machines become more capable.

The practical Ignatian model for family wealth and legacy

The lessons of St. Ignatius can be translated into a coherent family-office discipline.

The process begins with purpose: establish what the wealth is ultimately meant to serve.

It proceeds to self-examination: identify the fears, ambitions, loyalties, resentments, and habits that may distort decisions.

It requires discernment: study the facts, seek counsel, consider alternatives, examine consequences, and distinguish deep alignment from temporary excitement.

It demands ordered capital: align investments, enterprises, distributions, properties, philanthropy, and family-office services with the mission.

It builds people before structures: form capable owners, beneficiaries, directors, trustees, executives, and successors.

It creates governance: assign authority, document principles, manage conflicts, and hold decision-makers accountable.

It embraces adaptability: preserve enduring values while changing strategies, structures, technologies, and geographic practices as circumstances require.

It practises review: learn from outcomes, acknowledge errors, make repairs, and redirect resources when an initiative no longer deserves support.

And it culminates in service: use wealth and influence in ways that contribute to human dignity, family flourishing, productive enterprise, and the common good.

The true measure of a seven-generation legacy

St. Ignatius died in Rome on July 31, 1556. His feast is celebrated on July 31, yet his influence continues through the religious order, spiritual tradition, schools, universities, leaders, missionaries, and institutions that arose from the purpose he embraced.

He demonstrates that the most enduring legacies are not constructed from monuments to the founder. They are carried through people formed to live a mission.

For a family office, the final measure of success is therefore not simply net worth, investment performance, tax efficiency, or the number of generations during which capital remains legally intact.

The deeper questions are these:

Did the wealth help family members become wiser, freer, more capable, and more generous?

Did the governance system tell the truth and protect relationships?

Did the enterprise create genuine value?

Did the family’s influence serve people beyond itself?

Did each generation receive both opportunity and responsibility?

Did the family learn how to change without losing its identity?

Did the legacy remain alive, or did it become a collection of structures defending the past?

St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches family offices and UHNW families that no fortune is so large that it can provide its own meaning. Wealth requires direction. Ambition requires conversion. Power requires humility. Freedom requires discernment. Governance requires purpose. Education must form the whole person. And legacy must eventually become service.

The family’s greatest achievement will not be that future generations can say, “Our ancestors left us a great fortune.”

It will be that they can say:

“They taught us what the fortune was for.”