Philip Seymour Hoffman didn’t want his children to turn into lazy rich kids. The 46-year-old actor who died earlier this year of a drug overdose seems to have wanted his children to develop a real work ethic.

Hoffman’s accountant reportedly urged the Oscar-winning actor to leave a portion of his $35 million estate to his son and two daughters, but court documents reveal that Hoffman rejected this advice. He didn’t want his children — Cooper, 10, Tallulah, 7, and Willa, 5 — to grow up to become “trust fund kids.”

Instead, Hoffman left his fortune to the kids’ mother and his longtime girlfriend, Mimi O’Donnell. The Oscar winner felt O’Donnell would take proper care of the children.

According to the New York Post:

Attorney James Cahill Jr. — appointed by a court to protect the interests of Hoffman’s children…in his estate proceeding — recently interviewed the actor’s accountant, David Friedman. Friedman “recalled conversations with [Hoffman] in the year before his demise where the topic of a trust was raised for the kids and summarily rejected by him,” Cahill says in the Manhattan Surrogate’s Court filing.

Hoffman isn’t the only wealthy individual to worry about his children becoming spoiled by an inherited fortune. Bill and Melinda Gates are worth an estimated $76 billion (makes Hoffman look poor) and the power couple is supposedly planning to give each of their three children $10 million. In an interview at the March 2014 Ted Conference, Gates said, “They need to have a sense that their own work is meaningful and important,” Bill said. “You’ve got to make sure they have a sense of their own ability and what they’re going to go and do.”

The Gates created the Giving Pledge inviting America’s wealthy elite to give half of their money to charity. Everyone from Paul Allen to Richard Branson has signed on. Warren Buffet has famously pledged to give away 99 percent of his wealth and gift little to his children. In a letter to the Gates Foundation, he wrote, “I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing.”

Actor Jacki Chan has told the media that he plans to give his entire fortune to charity and will not be leaving anything for his son Jaycee. “If he is capable, he can make his own money. If he is not, then he will just be wasting my money,” Chan told Channel NewsAsia in 2011. George Lucas, Nigella Lawson, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Gene Simmons have made similar statements.

I think these tycoons are probably onto something. Wealth rarely makes it to the third or fourth generation — and this isn’t a result of estate taxes. Often the children of the wealthy become spoiled and soft as a result of their charmed lives, according to The New York Times. Never seeing the need to get a real job, they fail to develop the type of work ethic needed to keep the family business going or to find a career of their own. The wealth is only spent, never growing, and eventually it all disappears.