Vanilla

Estate plans go stale. Clients forget what they signed, attorneys draft documents that sit untouched for a decade, and advisors rarely have the tools to surface what has changed or gone wrong. Vanilla is an AI-powered estate planning platform founded in 2019 by Steve Lockshin of AdvicePeriod, built originally for internal use before being commercialized for the broader advisor market. It holds a patented technology position and has a dedicated offering for multi-family offices and firms serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.

For family office teams, the platform addresses a specific operational gap: turning complex, multi-entity estate documents into interactive visual diagrams that advisors can walk through with clients and their families. The MFO use case is explicit on the site, with features oriented around organizing estate data across large teams, engaging next-generation family members, and running scenario modeling for strategies such as GRATs, SLATs, and charitable vehicles.

Key capabilities relevant to family office workflows include:

• V/AI, an AI assistant that extracts data from estate documents, generates summaries, and traces every insight back to its source document
• Vanilla Scenarios for modeling estate tax outcomes and comparing strategies side-by-side
• Addepar integration with automated daily data syncing and customizable ownership mapping
• Document Builder for creating wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives across all 50 US states
• Estate Health Check for rapid assessment of planning gaps across a client book

The platform is US-focused, priced on a custom-quote basis for wealth management firms, and does not publish enterprise pricing publicly. A self-service Starter tier exists for smaller practices but lacks AI features and estate visualizations. Family offices outside the United States will find limited applicability given the US-centric document and tax framework.

• Visualizing and analyzing complex multi-entity estate plans
• Modeling estate planning strategies such as GRATs, SLATs, and charitable vehicles
• Creating estate planning documents including wills, trusts, and powers of attorney
• Assessing estate planning gaps across an entire client book
• Extracting and summarizing data from existing estate documents using AI
• Engaging next-generation family members in estate planning conversations

• V/AI estate document analysis and source-tracked summaries
• Vanilla Scenarios for side-by-side strategy modeling
• Estate Health Check questionnaire and gap identification
• Document Builder for wills, trusts, and directives in all 50 US states
• Interactive Estate Diagram with toggleable views and PDF export
• Addepar integration with automated daily data syncing
• Attorney Network with 100+ attorneys and paralegals across all 50 states
• Branded client-facing deliverables and plan presentations
• Life insurance and gifting calculators
• Federal and state estate tax liability calculation

Built for Multi Family Office (MFO), Advisors / Wealth Advisors (RIA), Private Wealth Owners / Principals.

Dedicated Customer Success Manager (enterprise platform); email support at [email protected]; in-app guidance and training; Vanilla Knowledge Base; Vanilla Academy (enterprise only)

Account provisioned within 1-2 business days for Starter tier after CRD number verification; enterprise onboarding process not detailed