A will protects what's yours. Here's how to capture who you are.
Most people know they should have a will. Far fewer actually have one — and even among those who do, something important — something very human — is usually missing.
It’s a conversation or a letter written from the heart. Whether written or spoken, a will often doesn’t offer enough space to contain the things a person meant to say to the people they love: about what they valued, what they hoped for, or what they wanted their family to know long after they were gone.
Yes, a will protects what's yours — and it does that job well. But protecting your legal and financial wishes isn't the whole plan. LifeVault was built to be a complete plan that both protects what’s yours and preserves who you are — and it’s redefining what a complete estate and legacy plan actually looks like.
The full circle planning experience
LifeVault has always helped people get the legal foundation in place: wills, trusts, directives, and documents that protect a family and make hard moments less chaotic. That work matters: 72% of Americans don't have a will. We built LifeVault to ensure families aren’t left scrambling to figure out a loved one’s last wishes.
But here's what we've learned from supporting millions of families through life’s hardest moments: the practical and the personal are never really separate. What a person decides in a will is shaped by conversations they've had, relationships they've tended, and the values they want to pass forward. The legal layer and the human layer belong together. Most estate planning tools only offer one of them.
LifeVault offers both.
Fortunately, digital estate planning is becoming standard. But Empathy LifeVault takes the next step by helping families prepare for life's defining moments: organizing legal documents, having the conversations that matter most, and leaving behind something truly complete — the documents, the words, and the human story behind both, all in one place alongside one’s biggest, most safeguarded assets.
Enter Conversations: a tool built to facilitate the ones worth having
More than half of employees globally have experienced a significant life disruption in the past two years. Most families never have the estate conversation. And most people never write down what they want their loved ones to know. (Empathy 2026 Workplace Benefits Report)
There's a conversation most people know they should be having: with a spouse, with kids, with an aging parent. About wishes, what comes next, or the things that are hard to bring up with loved ones. Most people postpone them. But complex moments don't happen on schedule. How, then, can families prepare to ensure the critical conversations are had?
LifeVault Conversations is a private, AI-guided space designed to help people prepare for exactly those moments before they arrive under pressure. Guided prompts adapt to a user's specific situation and relationship, so the experience feels personal, not scripted. It pairs with Empathy's written guides to give people both the emotional preparation and the factual grounding they need.
This is where Empathy's approach to AI shows up most directly. The tool creates structure and reduces friction around something most people avoid — not because they don't care, but because they don't know how to start. What it prepares people for is something only a person can do: sit across from someone they love and say the things that need saying, while there's still the chance to say them right.
Legacy Letters: what a will was never intended to contain
Think about what gets lost when someone dies with just the practical things written down… like the story behind their decision-making, or the memory they carried that no one else knew to ask about?
Legacy Letters is a guided tool for writing exactly those things — the personal letters a legal document was never designed to hold. The values worth passing forward. A life, in one’s own words, for the people who will miss them most.
People mean to write these things. Life moves fast, and it's easy to assume there will be more time. Legacy Letters makes it easier to do it now, while there is still the space to do it with intention and without urgency.
Why this matters for the institutions that serve families
The need for full-circle planning support includes both the practical and emotional aspects of legacy planning, and both are vital for institutions to get right. Research by Empathy and LIMRA found that post-claim perception — how beneficiaries feel about a carrier after a loss — is the single strongest predictor of whether they will ever become a policyholder themselves. And what moves them is whether they felt genuinely informed, prepared, and cared for throughout the process of filing a claim.
Proactive planning support before loss occurs is how carriers shape that perception. Conversations and Legacy Letters give policyholders a reason to engage year-round, and give carriers a meaningful way to show up long before a claim is ever filed.
For employers, the stakes are equally clear. Ninety-five percent of employees say bereavement-related benefits are valuable, and 81% say they would be more likely to stay with an employer who shows up for them during major life moments (Empathy 2026 Workplace Benefits Report). Benefits that support emotional planning before a loss are what make that commitment feel real.
For financial professionals, Conversations and Legacy Letters offer something most client relationships are missing: a concrete next step after the legal plan is in place, a reason to reconnect, and a way to show clients you're thinking about the full picture, not just their portfolio.
Planning that includes everything it should
Estate planning tools help people create, manage, and securely store documents, but LifeVault goes a step further: it helps people prepare for hard conversations and hold onto the values, stories, and memories that live outside legal documents. Today, LifeVault represents the full circle of legacy planning, where both the practical and the personal are held together in one complete plan.