Those “kids” are adults now: Joe Sumner, 49, Fuschia Sumner Wright, 44, Mickey Sumner, 42, Jake Sumner, 40, Eliot Sumner, 35, and Giacomo Sumner, 30. All six, according to Sting, have been keeping busy rather than waiting around for a dynastic handoff.
It is a pointed stance from a musician whose career has spanned arena tours, catalog value, and the kind of long-running royalties most artists would be happy to see once, let alone for decades. But Sting’s argument is less about denying help and more about rejecting the idea that wealth should remove purpose.
He is not alone among famous parents
Sting is part of a very specific celebrity-parent club: people rich enough to create generational wealth, and public enough that their estate philosophy becomes news.
Anderson Cooper made a similar point during a 2014 interview with Howard Stern.
“I don't believe in inheriting money,” Cooper said. “I think it's an initiative sucker.”
Cooper later became a father to Wyatt Morgan Cooper, now 6, and Sebastian Luke Cooper, now 4, but his position did not shift. On Air Mail’s Morning Meeting podcast in 2021, he said he would not be leaving “a pot of gold” for his children.
Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis have also said they are not planning automatic trust-fund futures for their two children, daughter Wyatt, now 11, and son Dimitri, now 9. Kutcher explained on Armchair Expert in 2018 that they wanted their children to learn to be “resourceful.”
His offer was not no support at all, just not blank-check inheritance.
“If they want to start a business and they have a good business plan, I'll invest in it,” Kutcher said, “but they're not getting trusts.”
The celebrity inheritance debate keeps coming back
The recurring theme is not that famous parents are refusing to help their children. It is that several of them are drawing a line between support and insulation.
For Sting, Cooper, Kutcher, and Kunis, the public message is clear: money can open doors, but it should not replace ambition, skill, or effort. That may be easier to say from inside a very comfortable tax bracket, of course, but it is still a revealing look at how some celebrities want their children to understand success.
The fortune may exist. The free ride, they say, does not have to.
