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Assistance or solidarity within families is emerging today as a solution to the “unsustainability” of public spending and to the consequences of the economic crisis. The current crisis has an overall impact on family transfers, which have reached a peak in countries known for their “familist” systems. The SHARE Survey, which compiled data on dix European countries in 2007 and 2011, was used to measure the impact of the economic crisis on the transfer of tangible assets (money and cohabitation) from parents to their young adult children as well as the inequalities that these transfers maintain among the younger generations. In the countries most affected by the crisis, family assistance has intensified in the first ten years of adult life, thereby widening the gap among European countries. The extent to which households are affected by the crisis varies as do the resources they possess to face these circumstances. As a result, inter-family wealth transfers are contributing to the creation of substantial inequality among young adults. In other words, this solution amounts to relying on inherited wealth to get a good start in life.