Gina Rinehart, the Australian mining billionaire, has cracked open the debate with a strange court battle winding its way through the Australian legal system. In short, Ms. Rinehart inherited a mining empire from her dad. Her three kids were also left with a stake in the family trust. Yet Ms. Rinehart shut them out of their ownership stakes, and now the kids are fighting back.
Court documents cited in the Australian media show that Ms. Rinehart believed the kids weren’t fit to manage their fortune. She said none had ever held a real job, unless it was given to them by the family. “None of the plaintiffs (her children) has the requisite capacity or skill, nor the knowledge, experience, judgment or responsible work ethic to administer a trust in the nature of the trust in particular as part of the growing HPPL Group,” she claimed in court papers.
She added that the kids are “manifestly unsuitable” to manage the fund and that it would be in the “best interests of the beneficiaries to force them to go to work.”