PlanVault

The Problem#

• PlanVault serves 400,000 customers who create estate plans online — wills, trusts, and advance directives
• When a customer dies, the family works with a local attorney, but PlanVault’s proprietary data format means the attorney cannot import the plan
• Families print PlanVault documents and hand paper to their lawyer, who re-keys everything — typically 3-4 hours per case
• CCPA regulatory pressure requires PlanVault to give customers portable access to their own data
• The attorney partnership programme is held back by the lack of a standard transfer format

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• Export every estate plan as an INHERIT document with estate.json capturing willType (typically "secular"), status ("confirmed" once signed), and domicile via common/jurisdiction.json
• Model revocable living trusts in trust.json with trustType: "revocable" and assets scheduled in asset.json
• Capture nonprobate transfers — TOD deeds, POD accounts, beneficiary designations — in nonprobate-transfer.json with transferType values like tod_deed, pod_account, and beneficiary_designation
• Apply the us-estate extension for federal estate tax details and state-specific variations
• Include conformance-declaration.json documenting supported entities and conformanceLevel for data portability compliance
• Record AI-assisted drafting via common/ai-provenance.json with model name, version, and human review status

The Integration#

• Export-focused: customers download their plan in INHERIT format, and attorney partners receive plans in INHERIT format on referral
• PlanVault does not import INHERIT documents — they are a plan-creation platform, not an administration tool
• The common/provenance.json block on every entity records PlanVault as the data origin, enabling downstream quality assessment

The Business Case#

• Attorney partnership revenue projected to grow 40% — from $2.4 million to $3.4 million annually — as INHERIT import saves partner firms 3-4 hours per referred case
• CCPA data portability compliance eliminates regulatory risk estimated at $500,000 in potential fines and legal costs
• Customers gain genuine ownership of their estate data in a format any INHERIT-compatible system can read

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. Customer creates a will and revocable living trust on PlanVault’s platform
2. Customer dies; family contacts PlanVault for the estate plan documents
3. PlanVault provides a PDF download in their proprietary layout
4. Family takes the PDF to a local attorney
5. Attorney’s paralegal spends 3-4 hours re-keying the trust schedule, beneficiary designations, and asset details into their case management system
6. Attorney begins administration work, having lost half a day to data entry

With INHERIT:

1. Customer creates a will and revocable living trust on PlanVault’s platform
2. Customer dies; family downloads the estate plan in INHERIT format (or it is sent directly to the attorney)
3. Attorney’s case management system imports the INHERIT document — trust, assets, beneficiaries, and nonprobate transfers populate automatically
4. Attorney begins administration work immediately