Vanilla simplifies estate planning in Texas by helping you organize and visualize every client’s complete financial picture.
Vanilla simplifies estate planning in Texas by helping you organize and visualize every client’s complete financial picture.
“At Mariner Wealth Advisors, we believe every client deserves ongoing estate planning advice, and Vanilla helps our advisors develop the core skills they need to have the right estate planning conversations with their clients.”
SCOTT LUHNAU
Vice President, Multi-Generational Wealth Planning
Texas Estate Planning Documents
Advisors invite clients to create estate documents.
Clients go through a self-guided questionnaire.
Clients review and finalize the plan.
Printed documents are shipped for signature.
Advisor keeps track of clients’ progress.
The estate plan is visualized in Vanilla.
Estate-related laws, taxes, and probate processes can vary by state. Here are a few of Texas’s notable distinctions:
Texas currently does not have a state estate or inheritance tax.
Currently, Texas is one of only four states that does not offer a small estate affidavit, which would allow an estate valued below a certain threshold to go through a simplified probate process.
Compared to other states, probate in Texas can be relatively simple. There are a few reasons for this:
Texas offers “independent administration,” which allows the executor of an estate to act without court supervision for some parts of the administration process. This can make probate faster and less costly.
Muniment of Title is a probate procedure unique to Texas in which a will can be probated without the need for an administrator or executor. If there are no debts to be paid by the estate, this can enable a simpler and less expensive way to transfer assets.
In some cases, probate can be bypassed in Texas with a Small Estate Affidavit. If an estate’s value falls below a certain threshold and there are no debts to be paid, the heirs may be able to forgo a full probate administration.Community propertyTexas is a community property state, meaning that any assets acquired during a marriage are considered to be owned equally between the two spouses.
Texas offers strong homestead exemptions, including protection from creditors, protection for a surviving spouse and children, protection in bankruptcy, and more.
Here’s a summary of how assets transfer when someone dies intestate in Texas:
Clients answer questions through a step-by-step process that generates their estate planning documents.
Clients can choose multiple options based upon their needs such as a QTIP marital trust or outright distribution to spouse, aged-based trust distributions for assets left to people in trust, and a perpetual pot trust for some or all assets left to children or descendants.
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Invite your clients to create core estate planning documents. Monitor the status of invites sent and your clients’ progress to ensure they’re successfully completed and executed.
Information from the estate documents flows directly into Vanilla so advisors can immediately see the specific fact patterns and integrate their clients’ financial data.
Integrations
Create estate plan overviews
Organize and onboard clients’ plans in one place.
Visualize how the estate plan works
Simplify complex plans with interactive diagrams.
Drive ongoing legacy planning
Create strategies and opportunities through impactful estate planning conversations.
Yes, Vanilla has a suite of core estate planning documents that have been tailored to TX law by top TX-licensed attorneys.
Yes, Vanilla enables advisors to create new estate plans and generate automated visualizations, reports and potential opportunities through Document Builder.
An advisor will receive notifications of the status of the client’s estate plan docs creation process, starting with the invite that was sent to the client, the progress of the questionnaire, finalized documents, proof of payment, receipt by mail, and the actual execution. These notifications can be seen within the Advisor Portal and/or received by email by both the advisor and client.
Vanilla ensures every customer is set up for success with a library of resources we continually update. In addition to our support team members, Vanilla customers have access to onboarding materials, our product knowledge base, courses through Vanilla Academy, monthly release webinars, and more.
Offering estate planning services has myriad benefits for financial advisors. It enables advisors to expand share of wallet, win new clients, connect to the next generation, and better tailor financial advice to individual needs.
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Talk to our sales team today.
