The Bank of Mum and Dad is becoming the go-to source of income for growing numbers of young workers and savers.

Some 20 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds expect to need family money to buy a home — while the same proportion are counting on an inheritance to fund their retirement.

A survey of 1,000 last year, conducted for the law firm Lime Solicitors found that 23 per cent of those born between 1997 and 2000 expect to be relying on parental help to pay off their mortgage while 21 per cent believed they should be given their inheritance while their parents were still alive. The same proportion worried about their quality of life without it.

Some 17 per cent said that they relied on money from their family to make ends meet. By comparison, more than half of people aged 55 and older said they did not need any inheritance to achieve their financial goals.

Debra Burton from Lime Solicitors said that she has seen legal disputes over inheritance soar in the past 10 to 15 years as more wealth has trickled down. It is estimated that in the next 30 years, more than £5 trillion will be inherited by younger generations — with many now counting on an inheritance.

Burton said: “No longer is inheritance a luxury. It is instead being depended on for basics — buying a home, making your ends meet, decisions about making children. It’s a real shift from their parents’ generation.”

One in seven said they would need the Bank of Mum and Dad to afford to have children. Experts have suggested that rising expenses are leaving women unable to have larger families, with figures revealing this week that abortions rose to the highest number on record in 2023.

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Burton said: “The intergenerational wealth gap is continuing to grow. Young people are in a drastically different economic climate to the generations before them. With a rising cost of living and little hope to independently become homeowners, it is understandable why there is such a huge reliance on inheritance to fund their futures.”

“When you’re 25, retiring seems a world away, so many are thinking ‘my parents are elderly and they’re doing well and that money will flow to me eventually’,” Burton said.

Wealth managers said they have also seen a rise in their clients giving money away before they die. George Davey from Titan Wealth said: “It is nice to see clients able to give in their lifetime and see the benefit of doing so rather than leaving all assets to be passed on at death.”

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But Davey warns against too much reliance on the Bank of Mum and Dad. He said: “Inheritance is never guaranteed. The high costs of care in later life can make the figure inherited hard to predict. It can, in some cases, cause people to change their minds about leaving money.”

Burton said to be cautious of handing over too much inheritance while you’re still alive: “The devil is in the detail, and lifetime gifting seems easy but if you get it wrong there can be serious implications.”