For as long as there have been billionaires in the United States — oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller was America's first in the early 20th century — there have been scions to squander said billions.
"Any fool can make a fortune; it takes a man of brains to hold onto it," Cornelius "the Commodore" Vanderbilt, another one of America's first billionaires, is said to have told his son William Henry "Billy" Vanderbilt. Three generations later, the Commodore's great-grandson, Anderson Cooper's grandfather Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (who spent much of his 45 years on Earth spending) wasted much of the famed Vanderbilt fortune, which once boasted more money than that held by the United States Treasury.
Reginald — whose journalist grandson has frequently chided the idea of inheritances — is only one of countless examples of a wealthy heir losing out on their inheritance, because of squandering the money they already had, or even more salacious reasons.
From Astor family descendants to the likes of Paris Hilton and Tori Spelling, see below for wealthy heirs who ultimately weren't given their designated fortunes.
How do America's wealthiest families decide on these inheritances? An estates an...