Vanilla Blog

Vanilla

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Aug 26, 2026

BELLEVUE, WA (August 24, 2026) — Vanilla, the modern estate planning platform built for financial advisors, today announced it has been named a finalist in two categories at the 2026 ThinkAdvisor Luminaries Awards: Thought Leadership and Education (Firm), and C-Suite Leader of the Year, where President and CEO Gene Farrell and VP of Marketing Emily Tran were both selected. The Thought Leadership and Education recognition honors the research and education program Vanilla has built for advisors over the past year. That work includes the 2026 State of Estate Planning Report, drawn from a survey of more than 1,000 advisors and...

Jessica Lantz

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Aug 26, 2026

August's release adds real depth for your most complex clients, and gives you more ways to turn planning work into something tangible you can hand across the table. Here's what shipped, and what's coming next. Confidence at every client conversation Model your most sophisticated estate plans in one place The challenge: For high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, sophisticated plans often fund subtrusts based on remaining Generation-Skipping Transfer (GST) exemption. Calculating that by hand, and redoing it every time assets or assumptions change, is slow and easy to get wrong. The solution: GST exemption as a funding option: Fund subtrusts using remaining...

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 Without regular oversight, plans can become outdated with costly consequences; for example, a will written before a divorce will likely still name the ex-spouse as a beneficiary.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 25, 2026

Vanilla Safe gives every member of a household access and guidance they need for an emergency, set up by their advisor in one click. BELLEVUE, Wash. — August 25, 2026 — Vanilla, the leading estate planning platform for wealth management firms, today announced the beta launch of Vanilla Safe™, a new product that provides organized access to key documents, contacts, and guidance for an emergency to every member of a client household, from spouses to adult children to fiduciaries. Enabled by advisors with a single invite, Vanilla Safe is available on mobile and web at no additional cost to every...

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 10, 2026

Great planning conversations depend on trust, and trust depends on being able to show your work. If a client can't see how you got from a total estate to what's actually going to them, to charity, and to taxes, the numbers become something to take on faith rather than something to build a strategy around. That's exactly the gap we closed with this update to Vanilla Scenarios. When you walk a client through a strategy, every number needs to hold up in the moment — where it came from, how it was calculated, and how it ties back to the...

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...

Vanilla

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Aug 04, 2026

BELLEVUE, WA — August 4, 2026 — Vanilla, the modern estate planning platform built for financial advisors, today announced it has been named a Finalist in two categories at the 2026 MMI/Barron's Industry Awards. Vanilla was recognized as a Finalist in the following categories: Digital Innovation: Vanilla — V/AI, Vanilla's Proprietary AI for Estate Planning Technology/Solutions Provider of the Year – Emerging Technologies: Vanilla — Estate Planning Platform The Digital Innovation recognition honors V/AI, Vanilla's proprietary AI built specifically for estate planning. V/AI turns complex legal documents into clear, interactive visuals in minutes, giving advisors back the time to have...

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...

Jessica Lantz

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Jul 31, 2026

July brought the heat, and a full slate of updates to match. From a clearer client-ready Personal Financial Statement, to expanded branding options in reports, and easier-to-follow scenarios, here's what's new: Confidence at every client conversation Open every Personal Financial Statement with the big picture The challenge: A client's financial picture holds a lot of detail. When you're walking them through it, the story of the estate is easier to land when it's summarized up front. The solution: Estate at a glance: A new overview page leads the Personal Financial Statement (PFS) with the story of the estate — how...

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...