Robert De Niro Favors Toddler Daughter to Inherit Fortune, Causing Bitter Clash Among His Older Kids

Oscar winner Robert De Niro, the 81-year-old Hollywood icon worth an estimated $500 million, has reportedly ignited a family feud that could rival the drama of his most explosive films. The legendary “Raging Bull” star is planning to leave a fat chunk of his fortune to his toddler daughter Gia, leaving his older kids fuming as they fight for their slice of the De Niro empire.

“Bob’s comments that he wants to make Gia a rich little girl has stirred up a hornet’s nest with the rest of the family,” RadarOnline claims it was told by an unnamed source whose position to know this information was not described by the tabloid.

The cinema legend welcomed Gia with his current partner, martial arts instructor Tiffany Chen, in April 2023.

“He sees it as Gia didn’t ask to be born to an elderly father, so he wants her to have a bigger share of his inheritance,” Radar’s purported insider dished. “Bob is in reasonably good health, but he knows it’s not likely he’ll still be around when Gia graduates from high school, so the best he feels he can do for her is make sure she never wants for anything in her life.”

Despite crushing it in his career for six decades, De Niro has shifted his priorities to embrace dad life yet again in his golden years.

During a February 2025 appearance on BBC Radio 2’s “The Scott Mills Breakfast Show,” the Goodfellas icon admitted his Netflix queue had taken a serious hit since Gia came along.

“I don’t watch as many movies as I should,” he confessed. “I try to watch films, especially that I’m talking. I just want to keep up. But I watch current events, if you will, news stuff like that, and now I watch with my little girl.”

Instead of binging Oscar contenders, he now finds himself deep in the wildly colorful world of “The Wiggles” and “Ms. Rachel.”

“I didn’t know of them until I started seeing them, and my daughter loves to watch them,” he revealed. “They’re great…They have a lot of energy.”

De Niro’s soft spot extends beyond just baby Gia. The insider — whose access to detailed knowledge of the Hollywood legend’s estate planning was not explained by Radar — revealed he’s planning a three-pronged inheritance strategy that heavily favors his youngest children, not only setting aside major cash for Gia, but also securing larger portions for his teenage daughter Helen, 13, and his son Elliot, 26, who is autistic.

This preferential treatment for his three youngest kids has the older De Niro clan members seeing red and calling bull, the tabloid claimed.

As an older man, he seems completely smitten with his late-in-life fatherhood gig.

In January 2023, De Niro gushed to AARP The Magazine, “I’m an 80-year-old dad, and it’s great. Everything that I’m consumed with or worried about or this and that just goes away when I look at [Gia]. So that in itself is, you know, wondrous.”

Adding another twist to this Hollywood family saga is the fact that all seven of De Niro’s children from his four relationships are biracial. His six older children—Drena, 53 (adopted), Raphael, 48, twins Julian and Aaron, 29, Elliot, 26, and Helen, 13—all have Black mothers: Diahnne Abbott, Toukie Smith, and Grace Hightower, respectively.

The actor has never shied away from discussing the reality of raising biracial kids. During the racial reckoning of summer 2020, he got real on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” about his awareness of his privilege.

“My children are all half Black, and I don’t have, even me, I take certain things for granted,” De Niro admitted. “When people say that they tell their kids, ‘Keep your hands [out] when you’re stopped by any cops, keep your hands on the steering wheel, don’t make a sudden move, don’t put your hands below, don’t do this,’ you understand that. That’s scary. That has to change.”

While juggling family drama, the octogenarian actor is still crushing it professionally, recently starring in Netflix’s “Zero Day” that dropped in February, with six more projects in the pipeline, according to IMDB.

“With the adult kids, you sense it’s more than just the money,” the source revealed. “They feel they are all equally important to their father, and that should be reflected in his will.”

But the famously hard-headed actor isn’t backing down. “Bob tells his older children they’ve had longer to establish their own careers and lives, and he’ll provide for them all as he sees fit,” according to yet more anonymous “insider” quotes.

While the grown kids argue there’s plenty of cash to spread around, they’re battling a notoriously stubborn screen legend who won’t be easily swayed.

“Bob will probably hear them out, but he’s stubborn and already feels like none of them are really listening to him,” the so-called source added. “He’s also very argumentative when confronted.”

As this real-life family drama unfolds, it seems even a half-billion-dollar fortune can’t buy family harmony for Hollywood’s legendary tough guy, who’s proving that even at 81, he’s still calling the shots both on screen and at home.