Held in Trust Symposium | An Agenda for Black Inheritance

An estimated $124 trillion will change hands in the United States through 2048, the largest wealth transfer in American history, with $105 trillion of it going directly to heirs. For Black families across the South, that transfer is at risk before it begins. Black families intend to leave inheritances at higher rates than White families yet receive them at far lower rates. Additionally, billions in wealth held by older Black households across the South sits in households with no will or trust to direct where it goes. This divide is a product of how the rules of inheritance are written. Together, we can rewrite those rules.

On October 21, 2026, Kindred Futures will host a strategic exchange grounded in new research titled Held in Trust: A Policy Agenda for Black Inheritance. This gathering moves beyond presenting findings. Together, participants will name the rules that put Black inheritance at risk, identify partners with the power to change them, and coordinate our collective strategy to rewrite them.

During this working convening, we will invite participants to shift in perspective from I to We asking themselves:

• What do I hold? What can I prepare, document, protect or put into motion?
• What has our family built? What must be preserved, documented and successfully transferred?
• What changes when we see our outcomes as connected? Moving beyond the private household toward community.
• What can we protect, build or change together than no family can secure alone?
• What laws, systems, and institutions must change so Black wealth can endure?

Held in Trust names that the inheritance paradox and the state policy choices that decide whether the Great Wealth Transfer narrows the racial wealth divide or widens it.

While some may enter the room as strangers, we intend to leave the space as collaborators with a focus on the state-level policy levers needed to protect Black Southern wealth across generations.

Black Southern families already hold substantial wealth: homes, land, businesses — worth protecting, transferring, and growing. Join us in interrogating the systems governing Black wealth while building the collective strategy required to change them.