Actor and playwright Stephen Lang, 54, remembers when, at 7 or 8 years old, he asked his father to buy him a toy submachine gun.

The request wasn't extravagant. His father, Eugene Lang, was on the way to becoming a multimillionaire and the founder of patenting firm Refac Technology Development. But rather than buy Stephen the toy, Eugene suggested they donate what it would cost to charity. It went to a boys' home in Queens.

"I was extremely upset at first," recalls Stephen.

But he says the gesture made an impression that remains with him today, and he doesn't seem to mind that his 87-year-old father intends to leave most of his wealth to charity.

When Warren Buffett pledged $31 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in late June, he rekindled a debate among the rich over inheritance — whether it's better to limit what you pass on and not spoil your heirs or let them inherit the wealth and build on it. Buffett, 75, has often said that wealthy parents should leave their children with enough money to do anything they want but not so much that they are doomed to do nothing at all.

Eugene Lang shares those sentiments. Best known for creating the "I Have A Dream" Foundation, he has given away $150 million — more than half of his net worth — with much of the rest also earmarked for charity. After putting his three children through college, he says, he expected them to be essentially self-sufficient.

"A good education is to learn to be self-supporting so that they can build their own inheritance," Lang says. "I never believed in luxuries. I still pick up a penny on the street."

Actors Joan Crawford and Marlon Brando wielded their money like a weapon from the grave, leaving some of their children nothing at all. Lang and Buffett are among those who instead say they chose to pass on modest amounts out of concern for their children's future. Calling heirs of the rich the "lucky sperm club," Buffett compares inherited wealth to choosing the Olympic team from the children of Olympians. It's unfair to children, he says, and to society.

Most rich Americans get wealthy through toil and unyielding ambition. Many say they fear that if they leave their children too much, it will rob them of the joy of success. Trouble is, parents often encounter the blurry line between enough and too much. Even heirs of large fortunes say that money does not necessarily enrich their lives. While few will part with the freedom it buys, those who are disinherited claim that being stripped of the family fortune brings a freedom all its own.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE

Wealthy people who don't plan to pass along most of what they have to their children are the exception, says Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, 56. It strikes at the heart of parenthood. Even those in the middle class who have been made millionaires by home ownership risk spoiling their children, but Chambers says that won't stop most. He won't say how much he plans to leave his two children but indicates that it will be substantial.

Even though Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton continued to drive a pickup long after amassing one of the largest fortunes ever, he left behind a dynasty that will influence his heirs for generations. His four multibillionaire children are tied for fourth place among the richest people in America, behind only Gates, Buffett and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, according to Forbes magazine.

Forbes editor-in-chief Steve Forbes, 59, is what Buffett would call a member of the lucky sperm club, a winner of the ovarian lottery. But Forbes says that this is an unfair double standard. Buffett may not have inherited his money, but Forbes says Buffett was endowed with genes and given an environment that made him smart and ambitious enough to succeed. Forbes sees passing down money as little different than passing down intelligence.

"Allowing children to build upon what you built is a good thing, not a bad thing," says Forbes, who was able to make two unsuccessful runs for the presidency because of the $400 million inheritance from father Malcolm Forbes.

Bob Carr, the 60-year-old founder and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, wants to strike a delicate balance. As one of seven children raised in a two-bedroom house, the son of a waitress and a high school dropout, he once promised himself that his children would work their way through college as he had done. He changed his mind. A community college math professor for most of his career, Carr got rich late in life when in 1997 he started a company that processes credit card transactions. He and his wife, Jill, 47, found themselves worth more than $250 million.

Most of their money will go into a foundation that awards scholarships to children of families with household incomes below $50,000.

The Carrs decided to leave their six children trusts worth $5 million each, but successful stock market investments have raised that to $13 million each. The children, 15 to 35, get access to 33 percent of the money at 25 and all of it by 50.

Despite their inheritance, Carr says, his children are motivated and doing well.

"We are pretty driven people. Dad would not let us sit around eating Ho Hos," says 22-year-old Kelly Carr, who will soon graduate from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. She hopes to pursue a master's in liberal arts and a doctorate but is unsure what profession she will enter.

The money, she says, "is less of an excuse to do nothing and more a reason to do what we want without restraint."

Kelly, who is living at home this summer to save on the cost of renting a New York apartment, laughs when asked if she feels a little cheated for not eventually inheriting one-sixth of the $250 million. "My dad worked really hard, and he can do whatever the hell he wants to do with it. My parents were obligated to feed me, and it was nice of them to send me to school. Anything beyond that is a very nice gift."

Chuck Collins, the great-grandson of German immigrant and meat-packing millionaire Oscar Mayer, also questions the value of large inheritances. He founded United for a Fair Economy, which is opposed to inherited wealth. Collins is also the author of "Robin Hood Was Right" and co-wrote a book with Bill Gates' father, William Gates Sr., promoting more taxation of inheritances.

In 1986, at 26, Collins broke with family tradition by donating his own $500,000 inheritance to charity. "I was making my first real decision in life," Collins said. "I felt some sense of relief that I was aligning my beliefs with my actions. I didn't want a legacy of a fortune that came from my family founding a business a century earlier."

Richard Cohen, an adjunct professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, brings another perspective to the debate. His grandfather, Ben Eisenstadt, developed the formula for Sweet'N Low, and Cohen's mother, Ellen, was later disinherited from the resulting fortune. Cohen's memoir, "Sweet and Low," published in April, chronicles how money soured relationships with his aunts, uncles and cousins, creating a permanent tear in the fabric of his family.

"Money messes you up. It is like a funhouse mirror. It distorts things and enables the worst," says Cohen, 37. "There is a degree of satisfaction of working for something. Heirs have no sense of accomplishing something on their own."

Psychologist Gary Buffone, author of the book "Choking on the Silver Spoon," says that large inheritances can "devastate otherwise healthy children, even children who are adults before they find out that they have been made rich."

DANGERS FOR HEIRS

Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, found much the same when he interviewed 10 fellow heirs, including Ivanka Trump and Michael Bloomberg's daughter Georgina, for the 2003 documentary film "Born Rich." The movie portrays the dangers, including drug abuse, inability to work and the paralyzing fear of disinheritance. Johnson, 26, says he finds it a strange phenomenon that so many heirs he knows are unsuccessful despite having every advantage.

"From a very early age, everyone associates you with your wealth, and that can overwhelm your identity," Johnson says. His film shows how Josiah Hornblower, heir to the Whitney and Vanderbilt fortunes, went into a tailspin after realizing the extent of his inherited fortune. He dropped out of school to work in the Texas oil fields and learned, to his surprise, that hard work made him happy.

But Forbes says heirs aren't doomed to unproductive or tragic lives. "How kids handle their circumstances depends on how they were brought up," he said. Forbes says that allowing children to build on the wealth they have inherited helps them reach places otherwise unattainable. "I've certainly had a fuller life than if I had to reinvent the wheel," he said. "I don't feel any of our kids will lead frivolous lives. They haven't yet."

Buffett, ranked by Forbes magazine as the second-richest billionaire, has lived among Omaha's middle class for 40 years. He is so insistent that his three children make their own way that he told his daughter Susie, now 52, to go to the bank when she asked for a home improvement loan. Buffett declines most media interviews, including one for this article.

But when USA Today published an article a year ago about Native American entrepreneur Lance Morgan in Nebraska, Buffett sent an unsolicited e-mail to the newspaper bragging that Morgan resisted any temptation to mention to the reporter that he was married to Buffett's granddaughter.

Buffett, it seems, is more impressed with those who ignore their legacy than with those who might leverage it.

"Lance is a remarkable young man — never mentions my name," wrote Buffett in his e-mail.