Many young people dream of having a significant inheritance from their parents that will set them up for life, while the latter work to leave behind inheritable assets for their children.
But what happens when a child simply declines to inherit? This is the case of India’s Devanshi Sanghvi, who supposedly turned down her parents’ multibillion-rand diamond empire fortune.
According to “The Times of India”, the eight-year-old decided that her life’s path diverged far from wealth, opulence and luxury. It is reported that Sanghvi chose to become a sanyasi, a Hindu religious nun.
The unique youngster is the oldest daughter of diamond magnates Dhanesh and Ami Sanghvi who own Sanghvi and Sons, one of the world's oldest diamond enterprises.
As the oldest, Devanshi was to be the heir to the family fortune, but she set her sights on a completely different life. To begin this unconventional journey, the girl was reportedly picked to trek 600 kilometres with monks to learn about the difficult life of a sanyasi.
According to “The Times of India”, a spectacular procession with camels, elephants, and horses was organised in Surat, Gujarat's western state, before she received her diksha (initiation).
Another heiress who made headlines for saying she would give away her family’s wealth is Marlene Engelhorn. The 30-year-old Austrian said that she did not like that she came from a rich family and would one day inherit a fortune for which she never had to work.
‘’Millionaires should not decide whether or not they contribute in a just way to the societies they live in, without which they never would have become millionaires,” she said in a video by Millionaires For Humanity.
Turning down riches is not a new phenomenon; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos declared in November 2022 that he intends to give away the majority of his wealth during his lifetime.
He told CNN that he was building the capacity to be able to give away this money.
‘’The hard part is figuring out how to do it in an efficient way. It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work and a bunch of very smart teammates, and I am finding – and I think Lauren is finding the same thing – that philanthropy is very similar,’’ he told the television network.
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