by David Straus, CEO Legacy Logix

I've been building companies since the 90's, and have invested in multiple generations of AI. I recognize that we’re currently in a huge hype cycle where everything is, or has AI.  There’s a lot of noise. But as a developer of software solutions, I can confirm that this time we’ve hit a tipping point.

When we first thought about building technology to solve the Estate management problem* in 2019, the cost was too high - even with the help of AI. But with the new wave of Generative AI (think GPT, Microsoft Copilot, etc.), the path to a solution became viable – one that could apply hyper-intelligent automation without compromising the integrity, security and confidentiality required in this domain.

This article will briefly describe how AI can be used as an enabler to actively manage Estate plans and assets (an Estate Portfolio). And how this helps Estate holders keep their plans current and in good health.

AI as an Organizer
Assembling Estate documents, information and assets.

To settle an Estate, a trustee/executor needs access, not merely to the plan, but to all the elements of the Estate. An Estate plan binder can only take you so far – it will be filled with information, yet it still won’t include everything needed to move forward. The trustee/executor will have to locate and understand every document, asset and liability associated with the Estate - financial accounts, insurance policies, loans, businesses, real estate, open payment accounts, personal property, identities, and much more.  That is a lot of information which needs to be gathered and organized in some form that will make sense to those settling Estates. This is doable in many ways, such as documenting everything in a spreadsheet or document. But it takes a lot of manual, repetitive effort - which most people are not willing to make.

This is where AI kicks in. When documents and assets are added to a digital vault, specially trained AI can quickly analyze each item and extract the most important information. It can then organize and present that information in a way that helps Estate holders track it during their lifetime, and makes it easy for successors to find it later – with no effort required.

Here is an example of how AI translates file uploads into an organized representation of an Estate portfolio:

AI as a Synthesizer
Making the Estate plan more understandable.

Let’s consider a 22-page trust document. There are very few people, outside of Estate lawyers, who can easily read and absorb the key points of this type of document. By applying AI to the task, distilling documents and bringing forward key values can help the average person cut through the noise and hone in on the most important details without having to read it all (unless they want to).

 AI can review a document and pull out key and critical information. Such as:

• What this is (e.g., a Trust)

• The type of trust (e.g., a Revokable trust)

• Who the grantors, trustees and beneficiaries are

• Key instructions

• Where and when the trust was established

• and much more...

The key points can then be summarized and displayed in a way that makes this huge set of information understandable and usable by both the grantors of the Estate, and by their trustee/executor during settlement.

AI can also provide summaries of the documents or assets that make them useful and meaningful for those who are not equipped to read a 30 page legal document. It can be set to generate different types of summaries, such as an extraction of key datapoints (above), or a focused summary of grantors and trustees’ rights. Here is an example of an AI-generated summary of a trust document:

 AI as a Mapping Tool
Identifying Estate stakeholders, roles and relationships.

The many people and roles associated with an Estate can be buried within and across multiple documents. This can include grantor, trustee, successor trustee, beneficiary, successor beneficiaries, guardians, general power of attorney agents, healthcare power of attorney agents, organization receiving donations, lawyers, and more.

A purposefully trained AI provides us with the ability to interrogate every document and asset to extract roles, relationships and their implications on the Estate. This information can be used to generate relationship maps, role-based contact lists and other insights pulled from across the Estate Portfolio.  

Here is a Healthcare Power of Attorney in which the AI identifies who is playing what role:

And here it translates that information into an easily digestible format, identifying the Health Care proxy in a list of all stakeholders, and listing the relevant documents within which that person is named:

AI for Always-On Monitoring
Keeping Estate Portfolios perennially accurate and up to date.

Making sure an Estate plan and assets are 'current' is key to avoiding problems down the line. This type of monitoring is not difficult, but it takes time and energy. Most people set-it and forget-it. They generate their Estate plan, and then fail to proactively engage in regular reviews. Below are examples where monitoring can drive action to avoid problems.

• A child referenced in an Estate plan is turning 18, raising the question of whether guardianship should move from physical to financial.

• A financial account has been added and should be checked to assure it is titled correctly.

• A family’s guardian for their children moves out of state and the parents should decide if they want to change to a different, local guardian.

• An Estate's value is projected to surpass an amount that triggers state or federal Estate taxes.

• There is a change in marital status or partners.

This is where AI plays a brilliant role. When combined with other technologies such as event processing engines, AI can identify and analyze key triggers across the combination of documents (will, trust), accounts (investment, retirement), assets (property), and people (grantor, trustee, guardian, beneficiary). It can then generate alerts for review by the Estate holders and their legal, financial, tax, or insurance professionals.  

With the AI working tirelessly in the background and pushing alerts when something needs attention, Estate holders know what to pay attention to, without having to exert time and energy to figure it out.

 AI as an Analyst
Analyzing and delivering insights on Estate value.

The same power of AI to understand text can also be used to understand the quantitative aspects of an Estate portfolio, and present insights based on that data.

• What is the value of financial accounts, insurance policies, real estate, etc. in my Estate Portfolio?

• How is the value of my Estate projected to change over time, and when would it be impacted by state or federal Estate taxes?

• What is the distribution of financial assets by beneficiary, and what does that represent in terms of current value?

AI extracts the data so that platforms like Legacy Logix can present meaningful insights against any slice of the dataset. This is exceptionally helpful for Estate holders to visualize the implications of their decisions, and for the trustee/executor to make sense of it all during settlement.

Here’s an example of an AI-generated summary of Estate portfolio value:

AI for Search and Query
Answering questions related to a specific Estate Portfolio.

Today, people think of products like ChatGPT and Google Gemini as a new interface to the internet: a way of making it easier to get questions answered. This is useful for public domain information, however most people wouldn’t choose this approach for confidential questions related to personal documents.

But when AI is applied within a secure portal to private documents and assets, and when that AI is trained specifically on the domain of Estates, we get a valuable tool for fielding questions and delivering instant answers against a complex set of information.  Questions that would normally require sifting through a pile of documents, or asking an attorney to do it. Here is an example:

I've been surprised the number of people I speak with who don't remember who their successor trustees are. And they are not eager to pull out their Estate documents to look for that answer, or to bother their lawyer with that type of question. Lawyers aren’t eager to interrupt their day to look for the answer either. As a quick and easy alternative, Legacy Logix uses a private and secure application of a generative AI interface on top of an Estate Portfolio vault. This provides an effective means to get these questions answered quickly, accurately, and without creating non-billable interruptions for Estate attorneys.

Privacy and Security

Using AI in an environment as complex as Estate management is a great application of this technology.  But for obvious reasons, it cannot be deployed within the public domain.  Legacy Logix uses a private and secure AI framework, in which all information communicated to or from our AI is private and proprietary to Legacy Logix. Access is protected to ensure that no outside system can access our AI or, any data used with our AI.  At the consumer level, the Ai agents are deployed exclusively within an Estate holder’s private vault, so no one outside the vault can access any of the data used within it.   

Conclusion

Let’s face it - very few people want to spend the time and energy organizing and monitoring their Estate portfolio, even though they recognize that not doing so is creating problems for their successors. This is where purposeful use of AI can provide huge value. It stays on top of the Estate day after day, year after year - without forcing people to do the work.

*In our article Mind the Gap, we describe our perspective on the problem between the time Estate Plans are generated and when they are used to help settle the Estate. It offers helpful context for this discussion on AI.