I guess it's a non issue for rich people, you can always pay a crew to maintain the assets. For normal people, inheritance is quickly unbearable (financial or interpersonal issues), and everybody just want to make it go away.
Inheritance is essential for the people still living in the house or on the family farm, although that's kind of a minority these days.
Ironically many of the historically wealthy couldn't maintain the assets. The UK is full of stately homes whose owners couldn't maintain or sometimes even heat. The nicer ones have been given to the heritage industry; many of the rest went through periods of requisition and/or dereliction. A random example that is now IBM Hursley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hursley_House
