Sting has six children, an estimated net worth of around $400 million, and no plans to hand one to the other. The 74-year-old singer, born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, confirmed in a new interview with CBS News Sunday Morning that his long-held position on inheritance remains firmly in place; he is not leaving his fortune to his kids, and he does not think there is anything unkind about it. When journalist Mark Phillips asked him directly whether he still intends to keep his wealth out of his children’s hands, Sting laughed before responding. The laugh said as much as the answer. This is not a man wrestling with a difficult decision. This is a man who made up his mind a long time ago and is entirely comfortable with it.
His reasoning, delivered with characteristic directness, cuts against the assumption that wealth shared with children is automatically wealth well used. “Telling children they don’t have to work is a form of abuse that I hope I’m never guilty of,” Sting said. In its place, he has offered something he considers more valuable: an expectation. “All of my kids have been blessed with this extraordinary work ethic, whether it’s the DNA of it or whether I’ve said to them, ‘Guys, you’ve got to work. I’m spending our money. I’m paying for your education. You’ve got shoes on your feet. Go to work.’” When Phillips asked whether his children ever push back or ask for more, Sting was characteristically dry. “No, not to my face, they don’t.”
Sting Children Inheritance: A Philosophy He Has Held for Over a Decade
This is not a new position. Sting first addressed the inheritance question publicly in a 2014 Mail on Sunday interview, where he described trust funds as “albatrosses round their necks” and made clear that his children already understood the expectation placed on them. “They have to work. All my kids know that, and they rarely ask me for anything, which I really respect and appreciate,” he said at the time. He also noted then that he would step in if any of them were genuinely in trouble, drawing a clear line between withholding support out of indifference and withholding it as an act of deliberate parenting.
In a 2020 interview with People, he returned to the same territory with similar conviction. “My kids are fiercely independent. They’re not sitting there waiting for a handout at all, and I wouldn’t want to rob them of that adventure in life: to make your own living.” The consistency across more than a decade of public statements suggests this is less a philosophical position for media consumption and more a genuine governing principle of how he has raised his family. His children, by all accounts, appear to have absorbed it.
Who His Six Children Are and What They Have Done With It
Sting’s children come from two relationships. His first marriage to actress Frances Tomelty, which lasted from 1976 to 1984, produced his son, Joe Sumner, now 49, and his daughter, Fuschia Sumner, 44. His marriage to Trudie Styler, whom he wed in August 1992 after a decade together, added four more: Mickey Sumner, 42; Jake Sumner, 40; Eliot Sumner, 35; and Giacomo Sumner, 30.
The range across those six is considerable. Joe Sumner is a musician in his own right. Mickey Sumner has built a career as an actress. Eliot Sumner is a musician who has spoken publicly about their own identity and artistic path. Each has carved out a professional life without the safety net their father’s name alone could have provided if he had chosen to let it.
That the inheritance conversation keeps returning in Sting’s press rounds suggests the public remains genuinely curious about it, perhaps because his position remains relatively rare among people with the means to do otherwise. Whether it is the right philosophy is a question each family answers for itself. What is clear is that for this one, it appears to be working.
Featured image: @theofficialsting/Instagram
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