Category: Estate Planning

Vanilla

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Sep 22, 2026

Today’s advisors are virtually inundated with AI tools promising to improve efficiency, help them reduce overhead, and enable them to add more value to their client relationships. AI-powered estate planning solutions are gaining traction, as clients increasingly expect estate planning guidance from their advisors. Just like with any AI tool, not all AI-powered estate planning technology is created equal. Some platforms deliver real value while others can cause costly liabilities that may not surface for months or even years. The evolving AI compliance landscape In the 2026 Investment Management Compliance Testing Report from ACA Group, the Investment Adviser Association, and...

Vanilla

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Sep 17, 2026

Advisors just beginning to explore estate planning often haven’t built the confidence through repetition to raise the conversation with clients. The hesitation is understandable, particularly at firms where estate planning isn’t yet a core service offering, so there’s no repeatable framework behind it. AI can lower the barrier to estate planning entry and help advisors offer guidance with more authority, but it can’t and shouldn’t fill every gap. According to a 2026 Edward Jones and Morning Consult survey, 82% of advisors are already using AI tools in their practice, and 53% see the technology as an opportunity to focus more...

Sarah D. McDaniel, CFA

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Sep 01, 2026

A client mentions, almost in passing, that her son just started ninth grade. She's talking about football tryouts and a new backpack, but what she doesn't realize is that she just handed you a four-year countdown clock. That's the opportunity hiding in every back-to-school conversation. Behavioral economists call it the "fresh start effect": people are far more likely to take action on long-term goals at temporal landmarks like the start of a school year. For advisors, that means September can be more than a convenient time to schedule client check-ins. It's the moment families are already primed to think about...

Vanilla

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Aug 25, 2026

Most estate plans never get a second look after they're signed. An annual review is the goal many advisors aim for but in practice, plans get signed, filed away, and forgotten. Without regular oversight, plans can become outdated with costly consequences; for example, a will written before a divorce will likely still name the ex-spouse as a beneficiary. A trust drafted before a business sale won’t account for recent liquidity. An annual review cycle will catch these disparities eventually, but estate plans are dynamic documents that evolve with your clients’ lives. In particular, the following seven events should trigger a...

Vanilla

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Aug 17, 2026

Bringing up estate planning with clients can feel intimidating for advisors who aren’t yet fully comfortable with the language, the complexity, and the point at which financial guidance can accidentally veer into legal advice territory. More than ever, though, clients across the wealth spectrum are looking for estate planning from their advisors. Recent research indicates that 61% of Americans say financial advisors should offer estate planning services, and 68% of advised clients would consider switching to another advisor that offers it. Estate planning is undeniably a critical piece of a holistic wealth planning strategy. If you’re considering adding it to...

Vanilla

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Aug 11, 2026

From tax law changes to liquidity events to shifting family dynamics, a number of factors can impact whether an estate plan drafted a decade or even a year ago still reflects the client’s wishes and current situation. Through regular estate plan reviews, advisors can catch potential issues such as outdated beneficiary designations or unfunded trusts before they become irreversible problems. Understanding the “why” behind estate plan reviews is simple; executing them at scale can pose a challenge for firms still relying on manual workflows. The components of a comprehensive estate plan review A thorough estate plan review requires several integrated...

Jessica Lantz

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Aug 06, 2026

Estate planning is a critical component of comprehensive financial planning. For most RIAs, it's also the hardest part to operationalize, because the financial data lives in one place while the estate work is done somewhere else entirely. The disconnect can be costly: manual data entry, version control problems, and siloed estate planning conversations (or no estate planning conversations at all). In 2024, Vanilla became the industry’s first estate planning solution to bring together AI-powered estate planning and leading financial planning capabilities when we launched our integration with eMoney, a collaboration designed to help advisors offer a more holistic approach to...

Sarah D. McDaniel, CFA

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Aug 03, 2026

Every August, National Make-A-Will Month gives you a natural reason to raise a topic most clients quietly avoid: what happens to their assets, their minor children, and their wishes if they become incapacitated or pass away. It's a low-pressure calendar hook for a high-value conversation and it's one worth having with every client and prospect, not just your largest accounts. Only about a quarter of American adults currently have a will in place. That statistic alone should tell you how much opportunity sits untouched in your book of business. And for the clients who do have documents, many haven't looked...

Vanilla

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Jul 20, 2026

Estate planning is complex by nature. For family offices, that complexity reaches a new level: Multi-generational wealth structures Intricate entity relationships Beneficiaries with competing interests.  Tax exposure that spans federal, state, and generation-skipping layers Family offices exist precisely to address these layered nuances with dedicated expertise and infrastructure. But many are still relying on tools that weren’t built to handle the variables associated with ultra-sophisticated estate planning: spreadsheets, disconnected point solutions, and legacy software. What makes estate planning different for family offices Family offices don't operate like traditional RIAs or wealth management practices. Client relationships run deeper and longer and...