Vanilla Blog

Financial and estate planning insights for advisors, planners, and attorneys
Vanilla
Feb 04, 2025

Introducing V/AI Copilot: Your New Estate Planning Assistant

Vanilla is thrilled to unveil V/AI Copilot, the industry’s first AI-driven estate planning assistant. Designed to simplify complex tasks and empower financial advisors, V/AI Copilot is an advisor’s partner for assisting clients with estate planning with speed and confidence. Why advisors need V/AI Copilot Estate planning is no small task. Advisors have to read and … Continued

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Vanilla

Feb 04, 2025

The 4 Core Estate Documents: What they are and why they’re essential for...

According to a 2024 survey from Caring.com, 40% of Americans don’t think they have enough assets to create a will. This reveals a general lack of understanding around the purpose of a will, which does more than handle financial assets. There’s an enormous opportunity for advisors to help educate clients about the goals of estate planning and core estate documents.  If you have a handle on the core estate documents and how they benefit your clients’ finances in the long term, you’ll be more likely to provide advice and guidance that will strengthen ongoing relationships with clients and their families....

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Jessica Lantz

Jan 29, 2025

What’s New in January: Enhanced Estate Planning Tools, Personal Financial Statements, and More

At Vanilla, we're starting 2025 with powerful new features designed to streamline estate planning workflows and provide deeper insights for advisors and their clients. Here's what's new this month: Now Available: Attorney Network: Seamless Legal Support Our new Attorney Network provides direct access to qualified estate planning attorneys through the Vanilla platform. Key benefits include: Flexible engagement options from quick consultations to full service support Transparent pricing and clear service options Coverage across all 50 states Expert support for trust funding and estate administration Estate Health Check: Simplified Client Engagement We're excited to introduce our enhanced Estate Health Check feature,...

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Sarah D. McDaniel, CFA

Jan 28, 2025

The Building Blocks of Estate Planning Techniques (And a Cheat Sheet for When...

Trust, tax, and estate planning can be intimidating to behold. Not only is there a sea of new terminology, acronyms, and legalese to decipher, there’s also an enormous gravity to the decisions being made and how they’ll affect the financial wellbeing of a client’s loved ones.  There are three sequential components underpinning trust, tax and estate planning: wealth stages, objectives, timing & deployment. Creating an optimized plan requires understanding the interdependence of each of these building blocks and how they relate to a client's estate. In this article, we’ll walk through how these three elements add up to effective trust,...

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Vanilla

Jan 23, 2025

Spotlight on Special Needs Trusts: Everything You Need to Know about SNTs

By Lisa A. Cohen, CEO of Visible National Trust Special needs trusts are the cornerstone of disability estate planning, and disability affects many more people and families than we might expect. Incorporating special needs trusts into estate planning brings certainty that families’ wishes will be implemented for their loved ones.  Visible National Trust serves families and individuals across the country with complete turnkey special needs trust solutions that meet families’ high service standards and evolving needs.  Seventy (70) million Americans live with a disability, according to the CDC. Twenty-three (23) million people with disabilities require lifetime support, affecting seventeen percent...

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Vanilla

Jan 22, 2025

Introducing V/AI Copilot: Your New Estate Planning Assistant

Vanilla is thrilled to unveil V/AI Copilot, the industry’s first AI-driven estate planning assistant. Designed to simplify complex tasks and empower financial advisors, V/AI Copilot is an advisor’s partner for assisting clients with estate planning with speed and confidence. Why advisors need V/AI Copilot Estate planning is no small task. Advisors have to read and understand lengthy legal documents, navigate family dynamics, and stay on top of tax strategies. V/AI Copilot is more than a feature—it’s your partner in delivering efficient, accurate, and insightful services to your clients. V/AI Copilot helps advisors: Simplify document analysis: Whether you’re reviewing a trust...

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Vanilla

Dec 20, 2024

Introducing Vanilla Labs

In 35+ years of solving estate planning challenges for clients—including some of the most complex ultra-affluent cases—our founder Steve Lockshin learned that simplicity, precision, and practicality are the keys to success. That’s why we're excited to introduce Vanilla Labs, our new hub for lightweight, innovative tools that redefine how advisors engage with their clients. Vanilla Labs is designed to ideate quickly and launch tools that make it easier for you to illustrate impactful planning concepts without overwhelming your clients or requiring extensive data inputs. These prototypes allow us to gather your feedback, iterate rapidly, and integrate the most effective solutions...

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Jessica Lantz

Dec 18, 2024

What’s New in December: eMoney Integration, V/AI updates, Vanilla Document Builder, and an...

At Vanilla, we're dedicated to evolving our estate planning platform to meet the needs of our users. As we close out 2024, we're excited to share several powerful enhancements that will streamline your workflow and help you deliver even more value to your clients. eMoney Integration: Keeping Financial Data Current Facilitate your planning with Vanilla's new eMoney integration. Say goodbye to manual data entry – this powerful integration keeps your client's financial data current through daily updates, ensuring you always have the most accurate information at your fingertips for better decision-making and planning. This also ensures data accuracy and consistency...

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Madison Eubanks

Dec 10, 2024

18 Stats to Know from Vanilla’s 2025 State of Estate Planning Report

In case you missed it, our recently released Vanilla’s 2025 State of Estate Planning Report is chock full of relevant facts and figures about what’s new and noteworthy in consumer mindsets around planning.  This annual survey of 1,000 US consumers is designed to unlock insights about how people view their families and values as well as the role of advisors and technology in the context of estate planning.  While the full report is well-worth a read, we also put together this skimmable roundup of some of the most important (and sometimes surprising) findings.   Read the complete, ungated State of Estate...

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Vanilla

Dec 05, 2024

3 All New CE Courses Now Available in Vanilla Academy

The best advisors (and, truthfully, our favorite people) are the curious ones—they dig in, ask questions, and are always learning. They want to bring clients great advice that’s backed by education, experience, and perspective.  For all the lifelong learners out there, Vanilla is your partner for refreshing, broadening, honing, brushing up, mastering, reviewing, or just dipping your toes into estate planning topics and skills.  Vanilla Academy launched earlier this year as an estate planning learning hub for advisors who want to up-level their offering and show clients a breadth of expertise, and we’ve just added three additional courses to the...

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Sarah D. McDaniel, CFA

Dec 03, 2024

A New Year, a New Approach: How to use estate planning to keep...

Let’s face it—most people procrastinate. Deadlines are often the only motivators that spur action, and for financial planning, this “crunch time” tends to hit in November and December. Unfortunately, this end-of-year rush isn’t ideal for a number of reasons: The holidays: Advisors and clients alike are juggling travel, vacations, and family obligations. Emotional rollercoasters: Whether it’s the stress of family reunions or the joy of celebrations, emotions can cloud judgment. Rushed decisions: Big-picture financial planning requires clarity and focus, neither of which are easy to achieve in a hectic environment. The result? A less-than-optimal setup for making critical long-term decisions....

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Brian Falldin

Nov 20, 2024

What’s New in November: Vanilla Document Builder™ and Platform Enhancements

This month, Vanilla introduces powerful updates designed to address the real-world challenges of estate planning. From expanded client options to time-saving innovations, these features reinforce Vanilla Document Builder™ as the premier solution for advisors and their clients. Vanilla Document Builder™ updates Advisor Access: Clearer collaboration with clients Advisor Access allows clients to share questionnaire progress and drafts of their planning documents directly with their advisors. Advisors gain insights into client planning without clients giving up control of their data. This feature helps collaboration happen more smoothly and securely, while keeping advisors informed. Guardians, stepchildren, and future children: Plan for possibilities...

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John Costello

Nov 19, 2024

Vanilla Releases 2025 State of Estate Planning Report, Unveiling New Insights into Modern...

New findings highlight increasing expectations for comprehensive estate planning services and technology including AI Vanilla, the award-winning estate planning software company, today announced the release of its second annual State of Estate Planning report, which surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers on their estate planning priorities, challenges, and expectations.  Vanilla’s 2025 State of Estate Planning report reveals that consumers are seeking comprehensive services and strategies from advisors to preserve both their wealth and their personal values across generations. It also highlights the need for advisors to harness technology to efficiently manage complex estate plans and provide comprehensive wealth advisory with the personal...

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