15 Wealthy Heirs Who Lost Massive Fortunes
Getting born into wealth sounds like winning the ultimate lottery, but history shows that keeping massive family fortunes intact takes more than just good luck. Some of the biggest inheritances in American history have vanished completely, leaving heirs broke and wondering where it all went wrong.
From grocery store empires to oil fortunes, these stories prove that money doesn’t automatically come with the wisdom to manage it. Here is a list of 15 wealthy heirs who managed to lose everything their families had built.
Barbara Hutton

The Woolworth heiress inherited $50 million when she turned 21 in the early 1930s, which would equal about $900 million today. Her inheritance came about as a result of her mother’s death, who died by self-harm in 1933. Hutton earned the nickname ‘poor little rich girl’ for good reason. She burned through her massive inheritance with an appetite for expensive shopping sprees, buying everything from haute couture to art pieces once owned by Marie Antoinette. Her seven marriages didn’t help either, with each divorce settlement chipping away at what remained of her fortune.
Huntington Hartford II

He inherited his fortune at the young age of 11, upon his father’s death. The $90 million was a result of being heir to the vast A&P empire that included grocery store chains across the country. Hartford grew up spoiled with servants catering to his every whim, which didn’t prepare him for managing money. He threw millions into failed ventures like a modeling agency that became a money pit and a disastrous real estate deal in the Bahamas that cost him over $30 million. Four expensive divorces finished off what his bad investments hadn’t already destroyed, leaving him filing for bankruptcy in 1992 and living in a rundown Brooklyn rental.
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Clint Murchison Jr.

Clint inherited his fortune when his oil tycoon father died in 1969, a sum that would be worth $1.7 billion today. Unlike his serious investor father, Murchison Jr. decided to have fun with his inheritance. His first big investment was founding the Dallas Cowboys football team in 1960, but he didn’t stop there. He poured money into restaurants, real estate deals, and even a pirate radio station. In February 1985, he had to file for personal bankruptcy protection after three creditors filed a petition to force him into bankruptcy. The oil and real estate collapse of the 1980s finished him off, and he died just two years after going bankrupt.
Tommy Manville

Thomas Franklyn Manville Jr. was an American socialite and heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune. He inherited about $10 million when his father died in 1925, which would be worth around $125 million today. Manville became famous for marrying 11 different women in 13 separate ceremonies, earning himself a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Each divorce came with hefty settlements that steadily drained his accounts. At the time of his death it was estimated that Manville spent more than $1.25-million on marriage settlements. His expensive taste for young wives and lavish lifestyle left him with just $1.1 million when he died in 1967.
Patricia Kluge

Patricia inherited a massive fortune when her husband John Kluge, once America’s richest man, died and left her over $50 million. Due to a bad choice to invest all her money in a vineyard, she went into significant debt and her property was foreclosed. She bet everything on turning their Virginia estate into a profitable winery, but the wine business proved much trickier than expected. The vineyard hemorrhaged money year after year until creditors came calling. Her entire estate, including the mansion and vineyard, was eventually bought by Donald Trump for a fraction of its original value after foreclosure.
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The Vanderbilt Family

Cornelius Vanderbilt built a fortune of around $100 million, which would be equal to about $200 billion today. The family controlled shipping and railroad empires that made them the wealthiest dynasty in America. Within 50 years of Cornelius’ death in 1877, his fortune was completely gone. His heirs lived extravagant lifestyles, building enormous mansions and spending like there was no tomorrow. The family made a crucial mistake by keeping all their wealth tied up in company stocks rather than diversifying, making it easy for descendants to sell shares whenever they needed cash for their latest expensive project.
Tori Spelling

Well-known actress and one of the heirs to father Aaron Spelling’s $600 million fortune, Tori Spelling’s spendthrift ways caused her father to limit her inheritance to a mere $800,000. Even though Aaron Spelling tried to protect his fortune by giving Tori less money, it didn’t work. She continued her expensive shopping habits, sometimes spending $60,000 in a single day on designer clothes and jewelry. With mounting debt from spending, she was then hit with a tax bill exceeding $1 million leading to court demands to repay debt. Her reality TV career and various business ventures haven’t been enough to cover her lifestyle and mounting debts.
Nicolas Puech

Nicolas Puech was valued by Forbes in 2024 at $13.6 billion, owing to the 81-year-old’s stake in the Parisian fashion house founded by his ancestor Thierry Hermès. Puech became a billionaire through his family’s luxury goods empire, but now claims his entire fortune has mysteriously vanished. In a court case which concluded this month, Puech said he no longer owns the assets in question: $13 billion’s worth of shares in Hermès International SCA. He blames his former wealth manager, but a Swiss court found no evidence of wrongdoing. Whether this represents the largest fortune ever lost by an heir remains to be seen.
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Matthew Mellon

Matthew Mellon flew by private jet to Cancun Mexico to check himself into drug rehab but was found dead in his hotel room after suffering an apparent heart attack. The banking dynasty heir had built a $500 million cryptocurrency fortune, but his death revealed a major problem. Mellon apparently had never bothered to share the location of the digital keys needed to access his digital fortune, and it now looks like his massive fortune is lost for good. He had hidden his crypto wallets and access codes in bank vaults across the country, but never told anyone where they were. His family is still searching for the missing digital fortune years later.
Euan MacAndrew

Euan MacAndrew was an average working man who suddenly found himself heir to a six-figure inheritance; it totaled just over $128,000 after taxes. While not as wealthy as other heirs on this list, MacAndrew’s story shows how quickly any inheritance can disappear. MacAndrew wasted no time blowing his inheritance on fast cars, fashionable clothes and drugs. His new addiction quickly drained his bank account, forcing him to start dealing cocaine to fund his habit. The money from dealing disappeared just as fast, and he ended up with a 10-month jail sentence, legal fees, and restitution payments that wiped out everything.
The Stroh Family

The Stroh brewing family built their fortune starting in 1850 when German immigrant Bernhard Stroh arrived in America with $150 and a beer recipe. The Wall Street Journal once described A&P as “Walmart before Walmart,” and until 1965 it was the biggest retailer in America. The family expanded aggressively in the 1980s, buying other breweries and diversifying into different businesses. But they borrowed heavily to fund these expansions, and when beer sales declined in the 1990s, the debt became crushing. The family lost control of their brewing empire, and the Stroh brewery was sold off in pieces to competitors.
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Peter Pulitzer

Joseph’s grandson, Peter Pulitzer, was the first to drive the family’s fortune into its downfall. His 800-acre citrus farm in Florida was threatened with foreclosure after a disease ruined the trees. The Pulitzer family had built their wealth through the famous newspaper empire, but Peter decided to diversify into agriculture. His massive citrus operation in Florida looked promising until plant disease wiped out most of his trees. Although documentation from his divorce estimates Peter Pulitzer’s net worth at $25 million, in the end, his ex-wife’s husband had to bail him out. The agricultural disaster marked the beginning of the end for the family’s publishing fortune.
Alex Lasarev

Alex Lasarev differs from traditional heirs and heiresses because she did not grow up in a wealthy household. After her father abandoned the family when she was three, Alex grew up modestly with her mother in Toronto. She inherited over $1 million after her mother’s sudden death. Her mother had been a professional violinist who earned well but spent almost nothing, leaving multiple bank accounts that Alex discovered after the tragedy. Alex immediately moved into an expensive penthouse and started partying hard to cope with her grief. By 1982 her partying lifestyle prevented her from ever practicing law again, and after the money was gone she became homeless.
Graham Roos

Graham Roos was only 26 when he inherited $750,000 after the death of his great aunt. Even though he knew he would receive an inheritance, the size of it came as a shock. Roos had been working regular jobs and living modestly when the inheritance hit his bank account. The sudden wealth proved overwhelming for someone with no experience managing large sums of money. He quickly fell into a lifestyle of expensive cars, designer clothes, and constant partying. Within a few years, the entire inheritance had been spent on his new high-end lifestyle, leaving him back where he started but with expensive tastes he could no longer afford.
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The Hartford Family

George Huntington Hartford built the family fortune by turning the original company from a small chain of retail, tea and coffee stores into America’s first grocery store chain. The A&P grocery empire made the Hartford family incredibly wealthy for decades. However, when family control passed to later generations, poor management decisions and failure to adapt to changing retail markets began eating away at their dominance. After 156 years in business, A&P closed its final store in 2015. The family’s wealth, once tied directly to their retail empire, evaporated along with the business that had created it.
The Eternal Lessons from Lost Fortunes

These stories share common threads that stretch across generations and industries. Whether it’s gambling addiction, failed business ventures, or simply living beyond their means, these heirs prove that inheriting money and keeping it are two completely different skills. Studies show that 70% of families lose their wealth in the second generation. The cautionary tales of these 15 heirs remind us that financial education, diversification, and restraint matter more than the size of the initial inheritance. Even the most massive fortunes can vanish faster than they were built when the next generation lacks the wisdom to preserve what previous generations worked so hard to create.
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