The post-baby boom generation can expect to receive not only life's lessons passed down, but a hefty $30.6 trillion over the next 50 years - at least by one expert's estimate.
The big question is what will the inheritors do with the money, which is almost triple the value of today's stock market.
There are no studies on the subject, but at least some of that cash and other wealth is expected to roll into stocks and other financial assets if it has not already been invested.
Conventional wisdom has been that boomer families - the roughly 46 million whose household heads were born between 1946 and 1965 - would start to use this accumulated wealth for retirement.
That would involve selling stocks and other financial assets, which would drain dollars from equity markets.
But one study indicates that even boomers liquidating assets for their golden years will pass on a significant amount to their children - money that even if spent on consumer goods rather than investments, may help underpin the stock market.
Some baby boomers who earned a lot of money over the years could even make more off their investments than they spend in retirement, according to John Havens, a senior research associate at the Social Welfare Research Centre in Boston.
Assuming a two per cent annualised economic growth rate over the period 1998 to 2052, when the estates of the last boomers are transferred, heirs other than the spouse will receive $11.4 trillion, Havens told Reuters.
That's roughly the value of the US stock market today, with the stocks in the Wilshire 5000 index, the broadest measure of the US market, adding up to $11.2 trillion this week.
At three per cent economic growth, boomer children pick up $18.8 trillion. If the economy kicks along at an annualised rate of four per cent, heirs may receive $30.6 trillion.
And with Haven's analysis of wealth based on the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances, the most recently available survey of wealth sponsored by the Federal Reserve, the estimated amounts to be passed down to heirs are in 1998 dollars.
What heirs do with their cash will depend on when they get the cheque, according to Norman Duncan, a retail broker with Vancouver, British Columbia-based Canaccord Capital Corp. He has advised several clients with newly-acquired money.
"If they receive it at age 24, they're most likely to spend it on a house with 20 to 25 per cent going into the market," Duncan told Reuters. "At (age) 35 or beyond, the person usually has a house with low interest rates so they put as much as 75 per cent of the cash into the market or other financial assets."
But even if those inheriting money just spend it, it's still good news for the market.
"There will be pressure on equity markets as boomers take money out, but on the other side there will be spending" as their children spend it, said Gil Knight, a money manager with Baltimore-based Allied Investment Advisors, which oversees $11 billion.
"If the consumer is spending, it has to be good for the economy, corporate profits and ultimately good for stocks," he said.
Other money managers say there are too many variables to predict the amount of cash that may be passed to boomer offspring.
"If estate taxes are phased out there will be more money left" to pass on, said Fred Taylor, chief investment officer with US Trust Co., which oversees $90 billion in assets. "Of course, there may be less than anticipated if the market takes some away."
The Democrat-led US Senate blocked an election-year bid by Republicans, backed by business groups, to permanently repeal estate taxes this month. Republicans wish to make permanent a provision in last year's $1.35 trillion tax cut that phases out estate taxes by 2010. Without congressional action, the tax would be reinstated in 2011.
But if there is a significant amount of inheritance money waiting to be spent, Taylor also has a clear perspective on what stocks may benefit.
"One thing to buy are the shares of financial services firms," Taylor told Reuters. "With so much money being handed on, there will a continuing need for solid advice as to what to do with it."