Money is a magnifier, especially when it comes to family tensions. Just ask the Pritzkers or the Astors.

A new book by a Canadian wealth advisor says that the anger between kids and their parents is especially strong in wealthier families.

The book, “The Great White Elephant: Why Rich Kids Hate Their Parents,” by Franco Lombardo, lays out the dark, intergenerational struggle that’s playing out behind the mansion gates in many of today’s richest homes.

Lombardo’s starting point is the failure of wealth transfers and business transfers within rich families. Why, he asks, do 70 percent of family businesses fail to pass successfully to the next generation? The numbers for the second and third generations are even worse.

The question was especially puzzling since wealthy families hired so many sophisticated and expensive advisors and trust lawyers to help them along the inheritance path.

The answer, Lombardo found, was in the emotional issues and bad relationships that were brewing inside wealthy families.

“The emotional component just wasn’t being dealt with,” he told me in a recent interview. “The more money families have, the more these problems are magnified.”

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