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When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last July, I watched advisors exhale. The exemption sunset, which everyone had been bracing for, didn't happen. The $15 million per-individual exemption was locked in permanently, and the deadline pressure that had defined estate planning conversations for years simply evaporated.
That exhale worries me. Relief has a way of eliminating urgency and halting forward momentum. Right now, millions of clients are sitting on outdated or unfinished plans, and their advisors must intervene. By taking action, adjusting plans to fit current tax law, and helping their clients stay on top of complex documents, advisors can ensure that client wealth remains secure.
Outdated Plans Threaten Client Legacies
For years, the looming deadline gave advisors a natural entry point into estate planning conversations. Clients felt the urgency. Without it, both advisors and clients drift toward deferral, which is the most human response imaginable — and the costliest one right now.
A generation of planning built around a threat that never materialized is sitting in client files: bypass trusts calibrated to old exemption thresholds, SLATs funded to capture what clients feared they'd lose, gifting programs designed to beat a sunset that never came.
Some of it still makes sense, but a lot of it doesn't. Some is even actively working against the client in ways that weren't foreseeable when the documents were drafted.
The most concrete example is bypass trusts built around the old exemption, which can deny the family a second step-up in basis at the surviving spouse's death. The trust designed to protect the family ends up costing them in income tax what it once saved them in estate tax. Due to the OBBBA, federal estate tax exposure has been dramatically reduced for most HNW households. Clients don't know this. They signed documents and believe they're covered.
Closing the Review Gap
Advisors know that reviews need to happen, but they lack a systematic way to do them without grinding everything else to a halt. For a practice with 300 HNW households, this isn't a project you slot into a quarter. As a result, the familiar calculation gets made: important, but not urgent enough to disrupt everything else. Another quarter passes, and the gap widens.
The good news is that the review doesn't have to be comprehensive to be valuable. In a few key steps, advisors can assess progress and take action.
First, they should look at when the plan was last reviewed. If the answer is "before 2025," there's a reasonable chance it was drafted around assumptions that no longer hold, either because of the OBBBA or because of intervening life events. Assessing this timeline, and reviewing what has changed in the client’s life, can open the door to broader conversations.
Bypass trusts are a key issue. Advisors should assess whether they get a step-up in basis at the second death. If not, a well-intentioned structure can turn into a liability. The estate tax savings the trust was designed to produce are now marginal under the higher exemption; the math may have flipped in a way the client doesn't realize.
Advisors should also check on beneficiary designations. Designations on retirement accounts and life insurance legally override whatever the trust documents say, and they're frequently out of sync with the plan. This is easy to miss and expensive when discovered too late.
Finally, advisors should draw client attention to estate tax exposure at the state level. The federal exemption is $15 million, but most states with estate taxes have thresholds far lower, and many don't offer portability between spouses.
For clients in states like New York, Massachusetts, or Oregon, state planning may now matter more than federal planning. Many advisors never started this conversation, because the federal picture dominated for so long.
Being Proactive Can Benefit Clients
These steps require a methodical process, a way to move through the book systematically and flag situations that warrant a closer look. Approaching proactively, rather than waiting for something to surface, will make all the difference.
The OBBBA created something the industry rarely gets: a defined planning window without a hard deadline attached. Exemptions are historically high, the law has no sunset, and there's a real body of existing work that needs revisiting. The advisors who treat this as an opportunity, rather than waiting for a client to ask, will drive much stronger outcomes compared to those who don’t.
Gene Farrell is the CEO of Vanilla.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
