Jessica Lantz

Sep 03, 2026

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Use Vanilla to model GST exemption status and track lifetime gifts for your most complex estates

In case you missed it, two of our recent product updates at Vanilla give you more room to model the sophisticated plans your most complex clients bring to the table. Here’s a look at what’s new:

Fund subtrusts with remaining GST exemption, and model GST status across subtrusts

For high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, documents often fund subtrusts with the remaining Generation-Skipping Transfer (GST) tax exemption. Getting that figure right usually means calculating it by hand, entering a fixed dollar amount, and redoing the math every time the numbers move.

Now, when building out estate plans in Vanilla, the remaining GST exemption sits alongside the remaining federal and state exemptions as a funding option. The remaining GST exemption is automatically calculated and applied to the subtrust, subject to available assets and the taxes paid from that share. Because the number is calculated rather than typed in, it updates on its own as the plan changes. Vanilla also allocates available GST exemption across subtrusts for you, and GST-exempt and non-exempt status now carries through to subtrusts across the Estate Diagram, the Waterfall, and the Transfer Tax page.

This update takes the manual math off your plate, so you can focus on the conversation that matters, what all of this means for your clients and their families. 

Give clients a clear view of their lifetime gifting, all in one place

Clients frequently have a long gifting history of who received what and how much exemption was used. That history usually sits in a spreadsheet separate from the rest of their estate plan, often requiring it to be manually reassembled and pieced together from old returns before every review.

With our latest product update, that lifetime gifting history now has a home alongside the rest of the plan, right inside of Vanilla. Record each gift with its donor, donee, date, value at the date of gift, and current value, and the page keeps running totals for exemption used against what’s available, the current value of everything gifted, and the estimated estate tax saved. As you enter a gift, you can draw current value straight from Balance Sheet assets by transfer percentage, flag split gifts between co-donors, and duplicate an entry for clients who make the same gift to several children in a single year. All of this vital information can be included on the PDF report, making it easy to keep your clients up to speed on their gifting thus far. 

Now, with Lifetime Gift Tracking in Vanilla, you walk into every review able to answer the gifting questions on the spot, the full history ready to show. And because that context is kept in Vanilla with the rest of the estate plan, it tells the full story of how a client has chosen to give over their lifetime.

Already a Vanilla customer? Reach out to our CSM team to see these in action. Exploring Vanilla for the first time? Schedule a demo.