Who should inherit my estate?

I’ve done well financially and will have a sizable estate when I die. My children are already very comfortable, while so many others are struggling. Is it wrong to leave my money to charity instead of to them?

—Wealthy and Wrestling

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Dear wealthy and wrestling,

Yours is a question that grapples with the moral purpose of money without ignoring the deepening disparities and inequalities that persist around us.

In a sermon (“What Is Money for?”), English Anglican priest Samuel Wells urges Christians to imagine not just what they can give, but also what kind of story they might want to live in. Directing your estate to efforts that build communion with neighbours in need, rather than reinforcing walls of isolating comfort, is deeply aligned with this idea.

Wells reminds us that the early Christian community portrayed in the Acts of the Apostles offers a radical vision of shared life — one where “there was not a needy person among them” because believers held everything in common (Acts 4:32–35). This passage doesn’t mandate economic policy, but it does narrate a moral possibility: a community where wealth serves relationship and need, not separation and scarcity.

Such possibility resonates with a conviction that economic systems must be judged by their effects on the vulnerable. How we allocate surplus reveals what we believe about human worth and moral responsibility. The consideration to leave your wealth to those in need, rather than heirs who are already secure, is not only permissible but commendable — a sign that wealth is not your idol but a tool for common good.

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Few expressed such solidarity more beautifully than 20th century Catholic social activists and corresponding friends Dorothy Day and Catherine Doherty. Their respective efforts declared that monetary wealth divorced from love and compassion has no eternal value. With Day and Doherty’s exemplary efforts and Wells’s rousing homily, I invite you to discern both how to distribute your legacy and what you want it to mean. You can do this together with your family, asking, “What kind of community can we imagine my wealth supporting?”

And if I might be so bold: to use wealth surplus as an investment in the common good is a daring act of Christian witness. It proclaims that your wealth has always belonged to God and our shared life with others.

So go ahead: imagine creative forms of giving while you are alive, and bring your family along as you discover together that the moral purpose of wealth might not lie in preserving comfort, but in nurturing the courage to care for those struggling in our midst.

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Ashley Moyse is a Canadian ethicist, theologian and associate professor of bioethics at Baylor University in Texas.