February Is American Heart Month: Turn Healthcare Awareness Into Estate Planning Action

February’s designation as American Heart Month offers more than a themed social media post, it’s an opening to facilitate crucial conversations that deepen client relationships and establish trust with the next generation.

The heart month hook: from health to healthcare planning

Every February, Americans are reminded to prioritize heart health, scheduling checkups, improving diets, and reducing stress. It’s a month dedicated to prevention and preparedness. Yet while clients may dutifully schedule their cardiology appointments, most haven’t had equally important conversations about what happens if a health crisis does occur.

This disconnect creates an opportunity for advisors. The national focus on heart health provides a natural, comfortable bridge to estate planning conversations that might otherwise feel awkward or premature. Your clients are already in a mindset of health awareness and risk mitigation. You’re simply extending that thinking to the financial and legal dimensions.

Here’s the conversation starter:

“February is American Heart Month and a great reminder that while we focus on preventing health crises, we should also prepare for unexpected medical events. Have you and your family discussed your healthcare wishes and financial contingencies?”

This approach feels timely, not morbid. It positions advisors as proactive and caring, giving clients permission to engage with difficult topics they’ve likely been avoiding.

Essential planning tools: powers of attorney and healthcare proxies

Heart health conversations naturally lead to a crucial question: What happens if a health crisis leaves you temporarily or permanently unable to make decisions?

Without proper documentation, families face court proceedings, frozen accounts, and agonizing uncertainty about medical care. Two documents prevent this scenario: healthcare powers of attorney (who makes medical decisions) and financial powers of attorney (who manages money and legal matters).

These aren’t luxury planning tools for high net worth clients. They’re fundamental protections every adult needs. In fact, clients without estate tax concerns often need these documents more—they typically have fewer resources to navigate court-supervised guardianship or prolonged account freezes.

Let’s break down both documents and how you can use Vanilla to approach POA planning.

Healthcare Power of Attorney (Healthcare Proxy)

Whether clients have taxable estates or not, healthcare proxies (advance healthcare directives or medical POAs) are universal necessities. This legal document grants a trusted agent the authority to make medical decisions if a client becomes incapacitated.

Why NextGen should care:

• Adult children often become healthcare decision-makers
• Without clear directives, families face agonizing uncertainty and potential conflict
• Medical decisions reveal family values in real-time

Financial Power of Attorney: The other critical document

A financial POA authorizes an agent to manage financial, legal, and business matters on behalf of the principal. 

Key POA Types:

• General POA: Broad authority but ends if principal becomes incapacitated
• Durable POA: Remains effective during incapacity, essential for long-term care planning
• Limited (Special) POA: Narrow authority for specific tasks (e.g., selling property)
• Springing POA: Activates only upon a triggering event like incapacitation

Your POA planning workflow

Help clients document both their healthcare wishes and financial contingency plans. Ensure their designated agents—often their children—understand these responsibilities and have updated contact information readily available.

Here’s how you can approach your POA planning workflow using Vanilla:

1. Assess: Check if clients have healthcare proxies and financial POAs and store existing documents in Vanilla
2. Review: Use Vanilla AI to summarize documents and identify gaps or outdated provisions
3. Capture: Add agents and healthcare proxies to Vanilla’s Fiduciaries section with updated contact information
4. Create: Use Vanilla Document Builder’s Essentials package for clients who need POAs and healthcare proxies

Life insurance planning: protection that matches client needs

Powers of attorney address incapacity, but what about mortality? Life insurance serves dual purposes in comprehensive estate planning: it provides immediate liquidity for families facing income loss or estate settlement costs, and for high net worth clients, it can become a sophisticated wealth transfer tool that minimizes tax erosion.

The challenge for advisors? Most clients either own the wrong type of coverage, carry outdated policies that no longer match their needs, or worse—they’ve let coverage lapse entirely, assuming their investment portfolio will handle everything.

February’s focus on heart health creates urgency around this conversation. Clients understand risk when framed through health. Your role is connecting that awareness to financial protection, then demonstrating how strategic insurance planning accomplishes goals their portfolio alone cannot.

Understanding client insurance needs with Vanilla

Before recommending any insurance strategy, you need a clear picture of what clients actually need. Use Vanilla’s insurance calculator and scenario modeling to identify coverage gaps if a client dies unexpectedly, determine liquidity needs for estate settlement, and calculate income replacement requirements for surviving family members. This data-driven approach transforms insurance from a product sale into a planning solution.

Term vs. permanent life insurance: Understanding the fundamentals

Most clients need help understanding which insurance type matches their goals. Here’s how they compare:

 

	Term Life Insurance	Permanent Life Insurance
Coverage Duration	Specific period (10, 20, 30 years)	Lifetime (with premium payments)
Premium Cost	Significantly lower	Substantially higher
Cash Value	None	Builds tax-deferred cash value
Death Benefit	Pays only if death occurs during term	Pays regardless of when death occurs
Best For	Income replacement, mortgage/debt coverage, protecting children until independence, maximum coverage on a budget	Estate planning, wealth transfer, lifetime death benefit needs, supplementing retirement income
Access to Funds	Not available	Can access cash value through loans or withdrawals
NextGen Appeal	Protects their financial security during vulnerable working years	Demonstrates long-term family wealth protection and guaranteed inheritance

 

Term insurance provides affordable protection when clients need it most. Permanent insurance offers lifetime guarantees and flexibility that serve broader estate planning objectives. Many clients benefit from both. Use Vanilla’s scenario modeling to illustrate how a layered approach may maximize protection while managing premium costs.

Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts (ILITs): Tax-efficient estate planning

For high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients, life insurance, if owned directly, creates estate tax exposure. While death benefits are income tax-free, they’re fully includable in the taxable estate unless action is taken. 

The ILIT advantage:

• Removes life insurance death benefits from the taxable estate
• Provides liquidity to pay estate taxes without forcing asset sales
• Preserves more wealth for family beneficiaries
• Keeps assets within the family

For clients in states with estate taxes, ILITs shield insurance proceeds from state estate tax, a frequently overlooked planning opportunity.

When modeling ILIT scenarios for NextGen, show the numbers. Run side-by-side comparisons: life insurance owned directly versus owned in an ILIT. Let them see exactly how much additional wealth an ILIT preserves for their inheritance. Data makes abstract tax concepts concrete.

Your action plan to engage clients this February

Reading about estate planning strategies doesn’t grow your practice. Client conversations do. And those conversations happen when you create systematic processes that identify opportunities, prepare personalized insights, and deliver outreach to which clients actually respond.

February gives you the cultural hook. Vanilla gives you the tools to execute efficiently. What you need now is a disciplined approach that moves from data gathering to client meetings without getting bogged down in manual analysis or generic messaging.

Here’s your four-step process to turn Heart Month awareness into meaningful client engagement:

Step 1: Assessment

• Segment your book by estate planning document status
• Identify clients without healthcare proxies or financial POAs
• Flag U/HNW clients with life insurance owned outside trusts
• Note clients in states with estate taxes or subject to federal estate taxes

Step 2: Analysis

• Use Vanilla’s insurance calculator to identify clients with coverage gaps
• Run scenario models comparing ILIT strategies
• Review existing POAs stored in Vanilla Documents
• Use Vanilla AI to identify outdated provisions

Step 3: Outreach

• Email campaign: “American Heart Month: Is Your Family Prepared for Medical and Financial Emergencies?”
• Offer complimentary estate document and insurance coverage reviews
• Schedule family meetings (client + NextGen)

Step 4: Execute and educate

• Facilitate healthcare and financial POA discussions
• Present insurance scenario models
• Evaluate ILIT opportunities for appropriate clients
• Introduce NextGen to your holistic planning process
• Use Vanilla Document Builder for clients needing new documents

The bottom line

NextGen wealth transfer represents the greatest risk to advisors’ practices. Heirs who don’t know you will seek advisors they do know. 

This February, change that trajectory. Use Heart Month as your opening to facilitate the POA conversations and insurance planning discussions other advisors avoid. When you’re the advisor who helped their parents prepare for health crises with proper documentation and showed them with data how strategic planning protects their inheritance, you become the advisor NextGen keeps. 

Most clients expect estate planning to be part of their advisor’s offering. Don’t just meet that expectation—use this timely moment to build the multi-generational relationships that protect your practice.

Ready to streamline your estate planning workflow? Request a demo today.

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.