Vanilla visualizes the estate plan.

Rivalta ran the same family. Here is what each produced.

Vanilla “Leonard Family Sample Report — Taxable Estate” variant dated 01/08/2025, distributed by Just Vanilla, Inc. Engine: Rivalta Estate & Trust vertical — one of six Run time: 28 min 30 sec wall clock

Their full product

Vanilla / estate visualization tool

  • Personalized strategy recommendations Four “Opportunities” bullets · advisor-narrated
  • “Opportunities” bullets surfaced 4
  • Cross-domain conflicts surfaced as first-class output Not a section in the published report
  • Time-bound triggers with action windows Not a section in the published report
  • Advanced-strategy pages Reference content — the same text appears in every report; family-specific fit is left to the advisor
  • Alternatives considered & rejected Not a section in the published report

One of Rivalta's six

Rivalta / Estate & Trust vertical, solo

  • Specialist agents that fired 8
  • Recommendations produced 18
  • Cross-domain conflicts identified 14
  • Time-bound triggers 2
  • Alternatives considered and rejected with reasons 36
  • Domains covered Estate & Trust (+ 5 more available)

The household, on paper

Both engines saw the same family. We changed nothing.

People & place

Client
Age 64
Spouse
Age 64
State
Washington (state estate tax, top rate 20% >$9M)
Children
3 (ages 37, 34, 24)
Grandchildren
1 (age 3) — more anticipated
Existing plan
RLTs (2000), Pour-Over Wills, POAs, healthcare, ILIT (2009)

The estate

Total estate
$12,777,000
Federal exemption
Under ($13.99M; exemption permanent post-OBBBA)
WA state estate tax
$1,041,554 projected at second death
ILIT death benefit
$8,500,000 (universal life)
Business entities
4 LLCs · $3.2M aggregate
Charitable bequest
$2M to Leonard Family Foundation

Vanilla's published sample contains an Opportunities section. Across four pages, the report flags four items: beneficiary-designation review, trust-funding review, anticipated changes in tax law, and a noted document typo. The Advanced Strategy pages that follow (GRAT, QPRT, SLAT, ILIT) are reference descriptions of each strategy — the same content appears in every Vanilla report. Below: their four bullets versus eighteen personalized strategies the Estate vertical produced for this specific household.

Leonard family

Their four bullets vs our eighteen personalized strategies

From Vanilla's report · 4 bullets

Change of Life Circumstances. “Documents in this estate plan appear to have been drafted prior to a significant life event. It may be advisable to consult an attorney.” — Beneficiary Designations. “It's generally recommended that beneficiary designations for retirement assets and life insurance policies be reviewed regularly.” — Anticipated Changes in Tax Law. “Many legal experts anticipate changes to federal estate tax laws in the near future. Such changes may make it necessary for estates as small as $5M to plan.” — Trust Funding. “Trusts in this estate plan are intended to hold some or all of the Grantor(s)' assets. The Grantor(s) should periodically review their assets to ensure they're properly titled.” — Plus: a noted document typo.

Rivalta Estate & Trust recommendation s

  • WA-Specific Disclaimer/Bypass Trust Restatement (Replace Portability-Reliant Formula)

    Restate both existing revocable living trusts ($2.282M and $5.345M) to replace the current marital-deduction-plus-portability formula with a Washington-specific bypass (credit shelter) or disclaimer trust. Washington does not recognize portability of its state exclusion (~$2.193M, indexed) — funding the marital share fully at the first death wastes that exclusion and exposes the full combined estate to WA estate tax at the second death. Build in a Clayton/disclaimer election so the survivor can right-size bypass funding after weighing the community-property basis trade-off.

    Trust agent · confidence 0.80

  • ILIT Modernization and Fiduciary Governance Foundation (Newly Elevated Prerequisite)

    Peer review elevated the existing $8.5M ILIT's integrity to a foundational, sequence-first priority. Both the Trust and Fiduciary specialists independently flagged that a Crummey-notice or incidents-of-ownership defect could pull the $8.5M death benefit back into the gross estate — spiking the estate to roughly $21.3M and generating an estimated $2.5M in combined federal and WA estate tax. Fiduciary recommends a Nonjudicial Settlement Agreement review; Trust recommends decanting or restating the ILIT into a dynasty-provision trust with a directed trustee and a Crummey-compliance overhaul.

    Synthesis agent · confidence 0.92

  • Appoint Corporate and Individual Co-Trustees Using a South Dakota Directed Trust Framework

    Pair a corporate trustee with an individual family co-trustee across all significant testamentary and irrevocable trusts. With trust situs moving to South Dakota, use SD's directed-trust statute: a family member or LLC manager holds the “Investment Direction Advisor” role with exclusive authority over the four LLCs (and any recapitalized FLP interests), while an SD-chartered corporate administrative trustee handles distributions, tax filings, and recordkeeping — with statutory exoneration for directed investment decisions. The same architecture governs the new Dynasty Trust and the IDGT receiving the installment-sale units.

    Fiduciary agent · confidence 0.95

  • Optimize Trust Situs to South Dakota

    Amend the existing revocable living trusts (~$7.6M combined) and the ILIT ($8.5M) to formally establish situs in South Dakota — an SD-based administrative/directed trustee, SD governing law — creating the legal platform for the dynasty-trust, directed-trust, and trust-protector structures recommended elsewhere in this plan.

    State Law agent · confidence 0.95

  • Standing Annual Exclusion Gifting Program with Gift-Splitting and Direct Tuition/Medical Payments

    Implement a standing annual gifting program to the three children and one grandchild at the 2026 annual exclusion of $19,000 per donee, doubled to $38,000 through gift-splitting under IRC §2513. With four donees, the family transfers $152,000/year without touching lifetime exemption — over 30 years, $4,560,000 of principal plus all post-transfer appreciation leaves the WA taxable estate. Layer in unlimited direct tuition/medical payments under IRC §2503(e), paid directly to the provider, which consume neither annual exclusion nor lifetime exemption.

    Transfer agent · confidence 0.95

  • Targeted Lifetime Exemption Gifts Channeled Through a SLAT to Remove Appreciation and Preempt WA Estate Tax

    Use a portion of the remaining $14,715,000 lifetime exemption now to move appreciating assets out of the WA taxable estate — delivered through a differentiated SLAT pair rather than as outright gifts. Target $4,000,000–$8,000,000 of appreciating assets: a completed gift uses exemption but produces no current federal gift tax while removing all post-transfer growth from both federal and WA taxable estates. Retained spousal access through the SLAT preserves indirect availability of the funds.

    Transfer agent · confidence 0.84

  • Family LLC/FLP Restructuring with Section 2036 Remediation

    Consolidate the four existing single-member LLCs ($200K/$1M/$1M/$1M) into a properly capitalized family limited partnership or manager-managed family LLC, with the client retaining a 1–2% GP/manager interest and non-voting interests held for eventual transfer to the three children and future trusts. Independent appraisal supports a combined minority-interest and marketability discount in the 25–35% range on the transferred interests. The Transfer specialist independently modeled the identical 30% discount and $960K impact — a strong cross-validation — and the assumption stays below the >40% higher-scrutiny threshold.

    Business agent · confidence 0.77

  • Charitable and Family Gifting Sequence Optimization

    The $2M charitable bequest to the Leonard Family Foundation and the family gifting program compete for the same asset pool. Lifetime family gifts are not income-tax deductible and carry over basis, while a testamentary charitable transfer yields a full WA estate-tax deduction. Peer review reaffirmed the sequencing and added GST coordination: intentional GST exemption allocation to dynasty-style transfers for the grandchild line, with a Dynasty Trust funded with discounted LLC interests as the GST-leveraged vehicle.

    Synthesis agent · confidence 0.96

Cross-domain conflicts the engine surfaced.

When the engine considers each recommendation against the others, the interactions surface. Rivalta produces cross-domain conflict cards as first-class output; Vanilla's report renders the strategies as separate appendix pages, leaving inter-strategy reconciliation (what happens when a DAPT and a SLAT compete for the same asset pool) to the advisor.

  • Structural tradeoff · High

    State Law recommends a DAPT for creditor protection (self-settled trust, grantor as discretionary beneficiary). Trust Structuring recommends an irrevocable trust with no retained interest for estate-tax exclusion. A DAPT does not automatically achieve estate-tax exclusion — the grantor's retained beneficial interest can cause inclusion under IRC §2036/2038. Resolution: if asset protection is primary, accept the potential inclusion; if estate-tax reduction is primary, use a standard irrevocable trust (SLAT, dynasty trust) without self-settled DAPT provisions. Hybrid: DAPT for the protection layer, a separate irrevocable trust for the tax reduction.

  • Business succession vs equal-gifting · High

    Business Succession recommends transferring controlling interest to the operating heir for continuity. Wealth Transfer recommends equal gifts to all children. The operating heir receives a more valuable, income-producing asset; non-operating heirs receive passive assets of lesser value. Resolution: equalize with life insurance — ILIT death benefit covers the non-operating heirs' share, with premium-funding checked against annual-exclusion capacity. Alternative: an installment note from the operating heir to siblings, or an FLP where the operating heir holds the GP interest and management fee while LP interests are divided equally.

  • Timing · High

    GRATs and QPRTs require survival of the trust term; elevated mortality risk makes term-dependent vehicles risky. Resolution: for elevated risk, avoid GRATs beyond 3 years and QPRTs entirely — favor outright gifts to SLATs (no survival requirement), direct gifts to irrevocable trusts, or IDGT installment sales (the note is an estate asset, but growth above the AFR still escapes the estate). Split-dollar life insurance can also deliver estate-tax benefit without a survival requirement.

  • Resource competition · Medium

    Charitable Planning recommends large charitable contributions for income- and estate-tax deductions. Wealth Transfer allocates lifetime exemption to family transfers (SLATs, GRATs, outright gifts). Both draw on the same asset pool, and the charitable contribution reduces what's available for exemption-utilizing transfers. Resolution: sequence lifetime exemption to family transfers first — removing appreciation from the estate compounds in value regardless of exemption level — then use charitable vehicles for what would otherwise be taxed. A charitable lead trust passes the remainder to heirs after the charity term, achieving both goals; for appreciated assets, a CRT provides an income stream plus a deduction without consuming exemption.

  • Basis step-up vs gifting · Medium

    The community-property strategy preserves assets in the marital estate so the entire community asset receives a full §1014(b)(6) basis step-up at the first death (~$476K income-tax value on the illustrative portfolio). The annual-exclusion gifting program moves ~$4.56M out of the estate over 30 years to avoid WA estate tax at ~20%. Every appreciated dollar gifted lifetime carries out its low basis and forfeits step-up — on low-basis, high-appreciation assets the 23.8% capital-gains cost of lost step-up can exceed the 20% WA tax saved. Resolution: bifurcate the gifting pool by basis — fund annual-exclusion and gift-splitting exclusively with cash and high-basis assets, and deliberately retain low-basis, highly appreciated community property to capture the first-death double step-up.

  • DAPT vs SLAT structural risk · High

    The self-settled DAPT (illustratively $5M, client as discretionary beneficiary) competes with SLAT funding (~$1.5M+ estate-tax benefit) for the same pool of non-lifestyle, lower-basis assets. More acutely, a client-benefited DAPT layered alongside spouse-benefited SLATs heightens reciprocal-trust / step-transaction exposure — if found interrelated, the SLAT exclusion can be unwound and the DAPT pulled back into a WA resident settlor's estate. Resolution: fund the two SLATs first with clearly distinct terms, trustees, and timing to defeat reciprocal-trust doctrine, then establish the DAPT afterward using a separate, non-overlapping asset tranche, once the SD/NV lookback clock has started. Keep the client out of the SLAT beneficiary class and the spouse out of the DAPT.

  • Aggregate transfer-capacity overrun · High

    Five separate removal vehicles each draw on the same finite pool of non-lifestyle assets — the $5M DAPT, the ~$1.5M+ SLAT funding, the ~$4.56M cumulative gifting program, the two QPRTs ($2.18M in residences), and the IDGT/FLP-discounted gift of the $3.2M business. No pairwise check catches the total: programmed lifetime removals exceed $13M against a transferable, non-residence, non-business pool of roughly $5M — each vehicle was sized as if it had first claim on the asset base. Resolution: build a single consolidated source-and-uses asset budget before Phase 1 funding, rank vehicles by net benefit per dollar deployed, cap total lifetime removals to actual transferable capacity, and stage the DAPT as a residual funded only with what higher-priority SLAT/QPRT/business transfers don't consume.

Time-bound triggers.

Calendar windows. Vanilla's report shows the existing-plan structure; calendar pressure is not part of what their tool tracks.

  • Medium · WA State Estate Tax Exposure

    Washington's state estate tax threshold sits well below the federal exemption, and cliff provisions in some states can tax an entire estate rather than just the excess once a threshold is crossed. Action: confirm domicile-based exposure, evaluate trust situs in a low/no state-income-tax jurisdiction (South Dakota, Nevada, Delaware, New Hampshire) to reduce state income tax on trust earnings, and weigh a domicile change only if the state-tax savings justify relocation.

  • High · ILIT / §2035 Three-Year Lookback

    The $8.5M death benefit sits inside the ILIT, but any restructuring that touches ownership — decanting, situs change, or ownership reorganization — restarts the three-year IRC §2035 lookback on the affected death-benefit amount. Action: evaluate the ILIT before any restructuring step; if transferring an existing policy, the three-year lookback applies; calculate Crummey-power capacity for premium funding, and consider a split-dollar arrangement for large premium policies.

What the engine ruled out.

The Estate vertical considered thirty-six alternative strategies, then ruled them out with reasoning attached. The artifact a compliance reviewer reads to see why a thing was not done.

  • Incomplete Gift Non-Grantor Trust (NING) for Washington Tax Mitigation rejected: a NING's principal benefit is avoiding state income tax, and Washington has none — so it delivers little value here. More importantly, a NING is by design an incomplete gift: the assets remain in the grantor's taxable estate and would not reduce WA estate tax as first assumed. The completed-gift SLAT achieves the intended reduction far more reliably. (The NING structure was considered and rejected twice across the run.)
  • Standalone Outright Gift of Full $3.2M LLC Interests rejected: superseded by the hybrid gift-plus-sale Dynasty/IDGT structure, avoiding double-counting with the Business specialist's installment sale of the same interests.
  • Lifetime Charitable Gift to the Leonard Family Foundation (in place of testamentary bequest) rejected at 96% confidence: a testamentary bequest yields a full WA estate-tax deduction and preserves limited lifetime exemption and WA-reduction capacity for family gifting; a lifetime transfer adds no WA savings beyond the testamentary route.
  • Standalone QPRTs for Residence and Vacation Home (outside Trust Structuring's plan) rejected: this is the Trust specialist's domain (dual QPRTs, 55% confidence) — valuable but lower-certainty and outside the gifting mandate; deferred to avoid duplicative recommendations.
  • Cross-Purchase Buy-Sell with Individually Owned Policies rejected: avoids Connelly inclusion but is administratively unwieldy across three heirs of disparate ages and unequal insurable interests; the segregated insurance-holding LLC achieves the same protection with simpler funding.
  • Outright Gift of Full LLC Interests to All Three Children Equally rejected: equal fractional gifting ignores succession reality (no designated operator), risks deadlock and forced sale, and forgoes the appreciation-shifting leverage of the IDGT installment sale — superseded by the operating-heir-plus-ILIT-equalization approach.
  • Self-Canceling Installment Note (SCIN) Sale rejected: higher mortality/premium risk and greater IRS-challenge exposure than a standard AFR note to the IDGT; not warranted absent a health-based rationale, which isn't indicated.
  • Sole Individual (Family) Trustee for Simplicity and Cost Savings rejected: the concentration of hard-to-value LLC/FLP interests, self-settled DAPT/NING structures, and active/non-active heir tension create liability and impartiality risks a lone individual trustee can't manage; the corporate/directed structure is warranted instead.
  • Private Trust Company (PTC) to House All Family Trusts rejected for now: plausible given the number of new vehicles and South Dakota's favorable PTC regime, but formation and regulatory-capital costs exceed near-term expected value at this asset level; revisit if trust corpus grows materially.
  • Incomplete Gift Non-Grantor Trust (NING) for Washington Estate Tax Savings withdrawn: the original ~$1.5M WA estate-tax savings claim was analytically incorrect — an incomplete-gift trust remains includible in the grantor's gross estate and produces no estate-tax reduction, and WA has no ordinary state income tax to begin with. The only residual benefit (WA capital-gains excise mitigation) is preserved elsewhere; estate-tax reduction runs through the completed-gift SLAT/DAPT/dynasty transfers instead. (Considered twice across the run.)
  • Nevada Situs for All Trusts rejected in favor of South Dakota: SD has a longer directed-trust track record, no state income tax, stronger privacy statutes, and perpetual-duration certainty. Nevada is retained as a fallback for the DAPT if a shorter two-year lookback is preferred.
  • Defer or take no action on the pairwise conflicts (asset-competition, structural-tradeoff, timing, resource-competition) rejected across every conflict-resolver evaluation: the do-nothing alternative was considered on the structural-tradeoff conflict four times, and on the asset-competition, resource-competition, and timing conflicts once each — dismissed every time as leaving the underlying conflict unresolved.

+ 24 additional alternatives in the full result blob, each with reasoning.

Estate & Trust was one of six.

Everything above came from Estate & Trust alone. The Leonard family sits inside the addressable surface of five other specialist verticals we deploy. Each one is built the same way Estate is.

Estate & Trust 8 agents · the one you saw

Eighteen recommendations on the Leonard family. Fourteen conflicts. Two triggers. Thirty-six alternatives ruled out.

Wealth 10 agents · production

Would model retirement income against the $2.3M of IRA balances, the $3.045M of taxable accounts, the $1.2M of liabilities, and the household's drawdown vs. legacy goal — sequencing year-by-year cash flow against the charitable + family-transfer schedule from Estate.

Tax Strategy 8 agents · production

Would surface the $2.3M-IRA SECURE-Act 10-year-rule exposure for non-spouse heirs, the income-tax position of the CRUT/CLAT structures during their respective terms, and the bracket-arithmetic for lifetime-Roth conversions given the permanent rate structure.

Insurance 8 agents · production

Would audit the 2009-era ILIT universal-life policy — carrier illustrations vs. in-force, MEC status, premium-funding adequacy through life expectancy, LTC and chronic-illness rider feasibility — alongside the household's broader insurance position.

Business & Real Estate 9 agents · production

Would price valuation discounts for minority interests in the four LLCs, evaluate FLP or §2036 exposure on existing entity structures, and walk depreciation-recapture + basis-step-up arithmetic on the primary residence and vacation home.

Trade 7 agents · production

Does not fire for a household whose investable assets are held in conservative balanced allocations and LLC operating interests. For families with active trading accounts, concentrated equity, or RSU stacks driving wealth events, Trade reads the position book and surfaces bias-aware behavioral signals against the household's estate plan.

Then there is Concord.

When more than one vertical runs on the same household, their recommendations interact. A Tax-optimal strategy competes for cash with an Insurance-optimal one. An Estate-optimal sequence competes for timing with a Wealth-optimal one. Concord is the cross-vertical reconciliation layer that resolves these. It is patent-pending, and it is one of the eleven claims that describe the architecture.

The numbers in the scoreboard above reflect what the Estate & Trust vertical alone surfaced on this household. Concord runs across the full financial cluster — Wealth, Tax, Estate, Insurance, Business & Real Estate. The reconciled plan is what reaches the client.

Read how Concord works

Not a price comparison. A category comparison.

Vanilla is a good estate visualization tool and they price it as one. Rivalta is a multi-domain reasoning engine and we price it as one. The buyer who treats these as competing options at different price points is making a category error.

Vanilla

~$2,400 /seat/year

Job-to-be-done

Visualize the existing estate plan. Map family structure, asset ownership, beneficiary designations, document inventory, and the waterfall of asset flow at each death. Project transfer taxes against current and future legislative assumptions.

Output shape

A visual report dominated by charts, balance sheets, fiduciary tables, and a back-section of reference content describing advanced strategies. The Opportunities section contains four bullets, covering beneficiary review, trust funding review, anticipated tax-law changes, and a noted document typo.

Domain

Estate-plan visualization.

Rivalta

$999/seat/month

Pro tier — see Firm tier

Job-to-be-done

Take the household's full financial life as input. Run six specialist verticals on it. Reconcile the conflicts that arise when the domains interact. Hand the professional a single coherent plan with reasoning, rejected alternatives, and the time-bound windows that drive it.

Output shape

A live Dossier with demographic-adaptive recommendations, conflict cards, rejected-alternative reasoning, sequenced execution plan, and a Concord pass that turns cross-vertical interactions into professional-decidable choices.

Domains

Wealth + Tax + Estate & Trust + Insurance + Trade + Business & Real Estate.

~5× the annualized unit price. Six domains, not one. Reasoning, not visualization. A different shelf in the store.

So what did this page show?

That on the exact household Vanilla put in their published Taxable Estate sample, one of our six verticals — running for twenty-eight and a half minutes — produced eighteen personalized strategies, considered thirty-six alternatives, and surfaced fourteen cross-domain interactions and two time-bound triggers. Vanilla's same-household sample is an estate visualization with current-state structural detail and a back-section of reference content; the two artifacts are different categories of output.

That was one sixth of the platform. The other five verticals deploy on the same household. Concord reconciles them into one plan. Vanilla is an estate visualization tool; Rivalta is a multi-domain reasoning system. They do not do the same job.

  • 1 of 6 verticals shown
  • 18 recommendations
  • 14 conflicts caught
  • 2 calendar triggers
  • 36 alternatives considered

If you are picking between Vanilla at ~$2,400/year and Rivalta at $999/month, you are picking between an estate visualization tool and a multi-domain reasoning system. They do not do the same job. The price tells you that.

See Sample Dossier

Sources. Vanilla “Leonard Family Sample Report — Taxable Estate” variant dated 01/08/2025, distributed by Just Vanilla, Inc. as marketing material. Rivalta output produced 2026-05-12 by the Estate & Trust vertical against a household profile reverse-engineered to match the Leonard family's published estate facts. Re-issued 2026-07-12: all Rivalta figures re-produced by a fresh Estate & Trust-vertical run on the same household inputs; the original run date and figures are superseded by this dated re-issue.

Numbers. Recommendation count, rejected-alternative count, conflict count, and trigger count read directly from the result blob produced by the Rivalta Estate vertical for this household.

Disclosure. This is comparative-advertising material. Rivalta is not affiliated with Just Vanilla, Inc. The numbers shown represent one run of one analysis on one household; production output for actual clients varies with profile completeness and the firm's seat tier.