Vanilla

Dec 15, 2025

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2025 Year in Innovation: What We Built and Where We’re Headed

We recently hosted our Year in Innovation webinar with CEO Gene Farrell and Head of Product Strategy Sam Trapkin. For those who couldn’t join live, here’s the recap.

Estate Planning Is No Longer a Fringe Offering

Just a few years ago, estate planning was still seen as a niche service—something advisors assumed belonged exclusively to attorneys or ultra-high-net-worth practices. That’s changed. Today, advisors from independents to the largest institutions recognize estate planning as essential to their value proposition.

The shift makes sense. Advisors who quarterback estate planning conversations build deeper relationships, retain more assets across generations, and differentiate in ways that portfolio management alone can’t match. With only 30% of U.S. adults having an estate plan, the opportunity to serve clients better—and grow your practice in the process—remains massive.

What We Shipped in 2025

U.S. Patent Granted

We became the first estate planning platform to receive a U.S. patent on core innovation around software-driven estate planning. It validates what we’ve been building since day one and reinforces our position as the category leader.

Attorney Network

We launched a centrally managed Attorney Network covering all 50 states with fixed-rate pricing and free consultations. When your clients have needs beyond foundational planning—bespoke documents, complex situations—you have a trusted network to turn to. No more piecing together individual referrals or leaving clients hanging.

Copilot

Our AI-powered Copilot helps you build understanding and confidence—both in the platform outputs and in client conversations. Use it to explain estate planning concepts, surface what matters most for a specific client, or query documents across an entire estate. It’s the first step in a longer AI strategy we’re continuing to develop.

Estate Summaries

Document summaries are useful. But estate summaries—a holistic view across an entire estate, sometimes spanning dozens of documents—are transformational. Upload the documents, get a client-friendly summary in minutes, and start a meaningful planning conversation. For advisors working with mass affluent clients, this has become a repeatable touchpoint that takes two minutes to create and leads directly into the next planning opportunity.

Scenarios

This is our third iteration, and it’s now the most robust modeling engine in the space. Compare a client’s current baseline against tax changes, state moves, business exits, or planning strategies. Stack scenarios, combine them, or run them standalone. Whether you’re showing high-level impact in seconds or modeling nuanced GST distributions with deep fidelity, Vanilla Scenarios gives you the flexibility to tell the story your client needs to hear.

Vanilla Starter

For advisors just getting started with estate planning, Starter offers a simplified version of Vanilla focused on Estate Health Checks and Vanilla Document Builder. It’s a lower-commitment way to bring estate planning into your practice and grow into additional capabilities as you’re ready. Onboarding begins this month.

New Estate Diagrams

Launching in beta next week: a reimagined estate diagram that lets you rearrange elements, toggle transfer values between trusts, and add or remove trust descriptions. The goal is to tell an entire estate story on a single page, customized to the conversation you’re having.

Bulk Balance Sheet Editing

Released last week, our new edit mode lets you make bulk changes to any balance sheet—including assets imported from Orion, Black Diamond, or other integrations. Changes save instantly. Coming soon: row grouping, column reordering, and improved support for fractional ownership.

What’s Coming in 2026

Proactive AI

We’re evolving AI from a reactive tool to a proactive coach. Instead of waiting for you to ask, the platform will surface recommendations and insights—opportunities you might have missed, next steps you should consider. Expect to see this roll out in the first half of the year.

Multi-Generational Planning

For advisors serving higher-net-worth families, we’re building support for multi-generational planning—grouping plans across Gen 1, Gen 2, and beyond, with linked balance sheets and a unified family view. We’re designing this closely with customers now.

Timeline Visualizations

Currently in internal testing. Timeline views let you model events beyond death—trust distributions, beneficiary access milestones, CRUT payouts. It moves planning from a single end-of-life snapshot to a dynamic view of how a plan unfolds over time.

Upgraded Integrations

We’ve built a new integrations platform that’s more robust and reliable. Orion is nearly complete; others will follow. We’re also exploring direct custodial integrations with Schwab, Altruist, and others. If that’s valuable to your practice, let us know.

Vanilla Document Builder Enhancements

On the roadmap: more flexibility in existing plans, foundational irrevocable documents (ILITs, GRATs), trust company specification, and streamlined generation for attorneys. We’re also exploring ways to give advisors better visibility into the Vanilla Document Builder experience while keeping appropriate guardrails in place.

In Case of Emergency

One of our most-requested features. In Case of Emergency makes it easy for clients to keep critical information in one place for their heirs—including a document vault. Look for this in the first half of the year.

Your Feedback Shapes What We Build

Everything on this list started with a conversation. A feature request. A pain point you shared with us. That’s how we’ve always worked, and it’s how we’ll keep building.

Thanks to everyone who joined the webinar and to our customers who continue to push us forward. Here’s to 2026. And if you missed the webinar, you can watch the recording here. 

The information provided here does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice. It is provided for general informational purposes only. This information may not be updated or reflect changes in law. Please consult with an estate attorney, financial advisor, or tax professional who can advise as to your particular situation.