It is a controversial idea that a good way of providing for your children’s future is to not provide for them much at all, at least not in the financial sense.

However, over the last 20 years many of the world’s super-wealthy have announced their intention to do just that.

In the early 2000s, the trend of giving away all one's wealth to charity was popularised by tech billionaires such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They set an example by pledging to give...