Jennifer Raess JD, CFP®, CLU®
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Mar 26, 2026
Tax Season 2026: Why OBBBA Makes This April Different for Estate Planning
Most estate plans were written for a different world. A world where the federal exemption was heading back to $5 million, indexed for inflation, where the planning urgency was about beating a deadline, and where the core question was: how much can we shelter before the window closes? That world no longer exists. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) permanently extended the exemption, raising it to $15 million per individual in 2026, and indexed for inflation thereafter. This means no more sunset, no more deadline, no more countdown. For clients, that's genuinely good news. For their estate plans, it...
Gene Farrell
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Mar 24, 2026
Why Bypass Trusts Built Before OBBBA May Now Be Costing Your Clients Money
When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last July, I watched advisors exhale. The exemption sunset everyone had been bracing for didn’t happen. The $15 million per-individual exemption was locked in permanently. The deadline pressure was gone. That exhale worries me. Not because the law is bad — it isn’t. But because relief has a way of crowding out urgency. And right now, sitting inside millions of client files, is a problem that didn’t go away when the exemption did. It just got harder to see. The sunset created a habit. The OBBBA broke it. For years, the looming...
Vanilla
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Sep 29, 2025
What Is a Spendthrift Trust and How Do You Set One Up?
Many families worry about what will happen to wealth after it passes to the next generation. There may be concerns about poor financial decision-making, personal debts, unstable relationships, or even exposure to lawsuits. In some cases, some traditional estate planning strategies may not offer enough protection if beneficiaries are financially vulnerable. In these situations, there are additional legal structures that can be used to help protect wealth from being misused, mismanaged, or lost to credits when it passes to future generations. This article will offer a detailed overview of one of the most effective tools for balancing long-term support with...
Vanilla
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Jun 02, 2025
Vanilla Named a Finalist in Four Categories in the 2025 “Wealthies”
June 2, 2025 — Vanilla, the most trusted estate planning platform for advisors, was named a finalist in four categories at the 2025 WealthManagement.com Industry Awards, recognizing our continued innovation and impact in estate planning software. Now in its 11th year, the “Wealthies” honor outstanding organizations and individuals that support financial advisor success. Vanilla has been recognized in estate planning across the following categories: Advisor Service and Support: Document Abstraction Services Implementation: Vanilla Academy Technology: V/AI Copilot Thought Leadership: The State of Estate Planning Report 2025 “These recognitions affirm what we’ve known from the start—that modern estate planning requires tools...
John Costello
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Oct 24, 2024
Vanilla Named to the 2024 CB Insights’ List of the 100 Most Innovative...
Vanilla recognized as a leader in modernizing estate planning for wealth management NEW YORK, October 24, 2024 – CB Insights today named Vanilla to its seventh annual Fintech 100, showcasing the 100 most promising private fintech companies in the world. “The 2024 Fintech 100 winners are high-momentum companies shaping the future of financial services,” said Laura Kennedy, Principal Analyst at CB Insights. “Unsurprisingly, this year’s cohort is deploying AI across a wide variety of solutions. But they’re also diverse in their reach in emerging and developing economies, and focus on everything from fraud prevention to financial inclusion.” "As Vanilla continues...
Madison Eubanks
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Jun 11, 2024
Beneficiary Deemed Owner Trust (BDOT): What You Need to Know
When it comes to planning for the future, trusts are helpful tools that can protect your money and make it easier to pass it on to others. Some trusts are simple, while others are more advanced and offer special tax benefits. One of the more advanced types is called a beneficiary deemed owner trust, or BDOT. Although the name sounds complicated, the main idea is that the trust is set up in a way that makes the beneficiary, not the person who created the trust, responsible for paying income taxes on the money the trust earns. This can sometimes save...
Vanilla
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Feb 12, 2024
Vanilla’s new features for February – detailed projections, collaborative onboarding, charitable calculations
February is a short month, but that doesn’t mean we’re short on new features. The Vanilla team has been working hard and are excited to bring three high-impact new features in February: Enhanced Projections Collaborative Onboarding Auto-calculations for Charitable Gifts Let's dive in. Visualize the future value of an estate with the new Projections Wealth advisors play a crucial role in helping their clients understand the full picture of their wealth both today and in the future. Generalized financial planning tools are helpful for understanding how assets grow and fall over time. But they fall short when it comes to...
Simona Ondrejkova, CFP
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Feb 06, 2024
The Impact of AI Tools on Financial Planning and Four Ways to Stay...
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way business is done in many industries. With about 42% of large-scale organizations actively using AI tools in their business, the financial services industry is no exception. Individual use of large learning models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Bard has also grown exponentially, including AI-powered software and AI based financial advisors. This begs a couple of very important questions. What does the rise of AI mean for the potential future of financial advisors, their clients, and individuals seeking out financial advice? And how can advisors leverage AI in their business to maintain a competitive edge,...
John Costello
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Jan 18, 2024
Vanguard Introduces Enhanced Digital Estate Planning Tools to Investors Through Partnership with Vanilla
Vanguard is introducing new and enhanced intergenerational wealth and legacy planning capabilities through a partnership with Vanilla, an innovative provider of digital estate planning tools and solutions. The offer was successfully piloted to a small cohort of eligible advised clients in Vanguard Personal Advisor Wealth Management over the past year and will scale to provide ultra-high-net-worth Vanguard investors with a powerful visualized approach to help manage and achieve their current and future estate planning objectives. Launched in 2015, the Personal Advisor suite of advice offers is Vanguard’s industry-leading hybrid advice service that combines a sophisticated online experience and underlying technology...
