'Shark Tank' Cast Kevin O’Leary Won't Leave Any Inheritance To His Kids

Kevin O’Leary, one of the cast members of the reality TV show “Shark Tank,” has an estimated net worth of $400 million. However, the Canadian businessman and television personality has no plans of letting his kids inherit his money. Here’s why.

The 67-year-old O’Shares ETFs chairman, who shares two children with wife Linda, told CNBC Make It that rather than leave his money to his kids, he has instead set up a trust to take care of his family for a certain number of years.

O’Leary revealed that after earning his first substantial sum of money, he worked with estate planners to create a generational skipping trust that gives financial support to all children in his family. However, he said the recipients will only receive money until their last day of college, and then they’re on their own.

Explaining his decision, the millionaire businessman said he did not want to “curse” his children by letting them inherit a huge amount of wealth without having to work hard and find their own careers.

“No free lunch, it’s just the wrong thing to do,” he explained. “You curse a child when you de-risk their lives. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help them. And listen, if [my son] ever has a kid, that trust is going to take care of that child from birth to the last day of college.”

O’Leary credited his mother with teaching him the value of hard work, describing her as someone who “hated entitlement.” He recalled his mother telling him that she would only support him financially until he finished college.

One of O’Leary’s first business ventures was Special Event Television (SET), an independent television production company he co-founded with two of his former MBA classmates. Later on, one of his partners bought his share of the company for $25,000, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

He then started SoftKey, a software company, in 1986 inside a Toronto basement, partnering with John Freeman and Gary Babcock. When a financial backer withdrew their $250,000 investment, O’Leary used the money from his SET share sale and a $10,000 investment loan from his mother to establish the company.

Softkey, which published and distributed CD-ROM-based software for Windows and Macintosh computers, acquired The Learning Company (TLC) in 1995 for $606 million and later adopted the TLC name. It was bought by Mattel for $4.2 billion four years later.

O’Leary then became a co-investor and a director of StorageNow in 2003. The company supplies climate-controlled storage facilities to various firms, including Pfizer. By the time it was acquired for $110 million in March 2007, it had become Canada’s third-largest owner and operator of storage services.

O’Leary has since appeared in many TV shows, including “Dragons’ Den,” its U.S. version “Shark Tank,” Discovery Channel’s “Discovery Project Earth” and “Redemption Inc.”

The entrepreneur’s wealth makes him the second-richest cast member of “Shark Tank,” beaten only by Mark Cuban, who has an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion, South China Morning Post reported.

O’Leary is only one in a long list of celebrities and business moguls who have declared that they don’t intend to let their children inherit their fortune. Others who have done the same include Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Daniel Craig, George Lucas, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, among many others.