What estate planning documents are required to create a client profile on Vanilla?

At a minimum, we recommend that you onboard clients who have dispositive documents (revocable trust and/or will). If your clients do not have these documents, you can use Vanilla’s document service to create the basic documents (revocable trust, pour-over will, health care directives, and power of attorney) they may need and that information will seamlessly integrate into the Vanilla platform.

Besides estate planning documents, what other information is required to onboard a client?

In order to create the most robust profile that provides a complete picture of your client’s estate, you need to provide the family information, financial data, and estate planning documents. Financial information includes bank accounts, stock portfolios, real estate, brokerage accounts, personal property (i.e. art and car collections), and retirement and accounts. With this information, Vanilla will be able to create the dynamic visualizations of the estate

Do I need an estate strategist in-house for a document review?

If your company does not have an estate strategist in-house, the Vanilla Estate Abstractions Services team will review your clients’ documents and transform them into the key pieces of data that become the Client Profile.

Do I need to manually enter all my client’s information into the Vanilla platform?

No, we currently have integrations with Black Diamond, Orion and Addepar so you can pull in your clients’ account information. Additionally, we have a CSV upload so you can pull information from a portfolio management system, financial planning tool or CRM and upload it to Vanilla.

Estate Tax Projections & Optimization

Illustrate the impact of planning

Deliver standout advice through estate analysis and strategic planning.

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“Using Vanilla during a prospect meeting was extremely powerful in helping us guide a family through a recommendation we were making. This type of analysis was eye opening for our prospect, and now new client, who then worked with our team to restructure his entire estate plan.”

Jennifer Pcholinsky, CFP, AEP
Senior Associate Relationship Manager, Balentine

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Project the value of an estate

Help clients make better planning decisions by projecting the growth of their estate at a future date or event, like the death of a spouse.

Uncover gaps in the current plan

Help your clients understand their potential federal and state estate tax liability and ensure they have enough liquidity with the right planning in place.

Model multiple estate planning scenarios

Visualize the impact of additional planning and potential tax mitigation strategies with Vanilla Scenarios™.

Other features for tax optimization & analysis

Estate Tax Estimations

Educate your clients on their potential estate tax liability

Help your clients understand their potential federal and state estate tax liability so they can make impactful decisions on how to allocate assets within their estate and mitigate tax liability.

Planning Calculators

Get insightful planning analysis fast

With our Life Insurance and GRAT Calculators, you can help your clients determine their appropriate amount of life insurance coverage and show the benefits and potential outcomes of establishing a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT).

Opportunities

Drive ongoing estate conversations

Proactively establish touch points with your clients and connect with the next generations with estate planning Opportunities.

“Our team uses Vanilla to visualize hypothetical scenarios and underscore the potential tax impact in a way that’s easy to understand.”

Brian Adamek, CFP, CPWA, CVA, CEXP
Founder & President, E-Wealth Partners

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On-Demand Estate Plans

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AI-Powered Estate Visualizations

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Frequently Asked Questions

Vanilla Scenarios™ gives advisors, wealth planners, and estate lawyers a powerful, dynamic platform to model multiple estate planning scenarios now and in the future to illustrate the impact of planning. Multiple scenarios — including various projections, SLATs, Annual Gifting, and more — can be created, saved, and layered upon existing plans. Advisors can use Vanilla Scenarios to model against complete profiles or an outline of assets.

Estate tax calculations are based on the current (2024) exemption of $13.61M per person (or $27.22M for a married couple). The exemption will be indexed for inflation each year and is scheduled to sunset to $6.8M per person in 2026 (indexed for inflation from 2011).

Vanilla enables advisors to have ongoing conversations with their clients about their estate plans. Opportunities identify the details about the estate that need to be looked at and then prioritized (i.e. beneficiary updates).