Estate Planning Clients Increasingly Turn to Advisers

As financial advisers take on more complex planning responsibilities such as multigenerational wealth transfers, trust structuring and tax optimization, estate planning technology is becoming a critical part of the advisory practice.

According to the Oasis Group’s report, “2026 Peaks for Estate Planning Platforms,” estate planning has evolved from a document-heavy process typically outsourced to attorneys to a digitally enabled, adviser-led capability directly integrated into the wealth management experience.

Evaluating estate planning platforms, the Oasis Group categorized providers into three tiers, based on the breadth and execution of their capabilities.

“Summiteers” such as Luminary, Vanilla and Wealth.com were defined as leading solutions with comprehensive functionality. “Mountaineers” such as fpAlpha and EncorEstate Plans offer solid capabilities with room for growth. “Climbers” such as eMoney and MoneyGuide Wealth Studios have foundational tools with limited scalability, the report stated.

Not Enough Attorneys

According to the estate planning firm Trust & Will, the estate planning industry stands at the edge of a major imbalance of attorney demand and supply.

“You have the majority of estate planning attorneys at or near retirement age today,” said Cody Barbo, Trust & Will’s co-founder and CEO, in a previous interview with PLANADVISER. “So you have less estate attorneys than there have ever been before, with a larger population and a larger wealth transfer than ever before to serve.”

Barbo said clients who need an attorney often do not know which attorney to go to or do not know the steps and costs involved in estate planning. He said the average family can take “weeks or months” to finish the process.

The reliance on external attorneys is one reason advisers should prioritize adopting estate planning platforms, according to the Oasis Group.

“Many advisory firms still offer referrals to attorneys to generate estate plans. However, those referrals may be a one-way street where the adviser provides referrals to the attorney’s practice, and the attorney’s practice does not refer to the adviser,” wrote John O’Connel, CEO of the Oasis Group, in an email to PLANADVISER. “In these cases, advisers should consider using an estate planning solution.”

When advisers implement these platforms, attorney support is often embedded directly into the experience. For example, Trust & Will maintains a network of approximately 150 estate attorneys across the U.S. that can support clients within its platform.

AI Impact  on Estate Planning

Another inflection point for estate planning is the growing impact of artificial intelligence.

According to the Oasis Group, planning capabilities such as document ingestion, data extraction and AI-driven insights are reducing manual effort and boosting productivity, and platforms that have not implemented AI as a core capability may risk falling behind.

“Everything from the initial document ingestion of an existing estate plan through plan design and even initial drafting can all leverage artificial intelligence to increase the velocity of the process,” O’Connel wrote.

Barbo says AI is already influencing client behavior. According to Trust & Will’s “2026 Estate Planning Report,” 30% of survey respondents reported trusting AI more than a human attorney.

Trust & Will has embedded an AI assistant within its platform to help guide users through the estate planning process.

“People can log in with their trust and all accounts, make simple edits in minutes, and the AI assistant is a really good neutral sounding board that we’ve  gated to only be education-focused,” says Barbo.

Trust & Will was invited to participate in the Oasis Group’s report but declined.