The Missing Piece in Democratizing Estate Planning
Access to estate planning shouldn't depend on where you live, or whether you can afford an attorney. That has always been the belief behind Empathy’s work — and it is why, today, Empathy is joining the LIVE Coalition to advocate for the modernization of U.S. estate planning laws.
When we started Empathy, we started with loss. We built tools to help families navigate the overwhelming practical and emotional burden that follows a death — the probate questions, the account closures, the paperwork that keeps arriving while grief is still raw. We partnered with leading life insurers so that families received support directly, at the moment of claim. The model worked, and it scaled.
What that work taught us was that the hardest moments after loss almost always traced back to something that never happened before it. A plan that was never made. A conversation that was never had. So we built Empathy LifeVault™, bringing the same approach to estate planning: digital tools, designed with leading estate attorneys, that make preparation as accessible as it should always have been. We are the leading partner to the life insurers, financial institutions, and advisors who bring those tools to families — embedding planning into the relationships families already trust, rather than asking them to seek it out on their own. Today, 45 million people across North America have access to Empathy through their coverage with almost 50 life insurers, including 8 of the top 10 in the US.
The gap the data keeps surfacing
Our research on the Great Wealth Transfer — shared with advisors and institutions at a recent webinar, with a full report forthcoming — puts a sharp point on what remains. Families expect the transfer to happen, on average, within seven years. Not a distant horizon, but inside current planning relationships, inside active client books. What makes this especially striking: 87% of families say they have already had conversations about their financial or legacy plans. The intent is there. And yet fewer than 1 in 3 has a will — a gap that should alarm anyone working in this space. Most families say their documents wouldn’t hold up if needed today. More than half expect the transfer to go badly.
The barriers aren’t primarily about intent or awareness. They are structural. Too many states still require estate documents to be created, signed, and notarized in person — rules designed for a world that no longer exists for most families. For the life insurers and financial institutions embedding digital planning tools into their platforms, that patchwork creates real compliance uncertainty that limits where and how those tools can be deployed. The families who need this most are often in the states that have moved slowest.
Joining the LIVE Coalition
That is the context for why Empathy is joining the LIVE Coalition — the Legacy, Innovation & Virtual Estate Planning Coalition — a cross-industry effort to modernize U.S. estate planning laws and enable e-wills, remote notarization, digital execution, and cross-state recognition of estate documents. Most coalition members approach this from the consumer side. We are bringing the institutional perspective: the view from inside the claims workflows, advisor platforms, and policyholder ecosystems where planning either happens — or doesn’t.
We have built tools that make planning more accessible. We have partnered with the institutions that bring those tools to families at scale. Now we are adding our voice to the effort to make the legal environment match the moment we are in — because democratizing access to estate planning requires not just better technology, but the legal ground for that technology to stand on. When digital estate planning is recognized across states, the institutions embedding these tools can reach further, serve more people, and do it with confidence.
The Great Wealth Transfer is already happening, and those navigating it deserve every advantage we can give them — better tools, better institutional support, and laws that reflect how people actually live and plan today. That is what we are joining LIVE to help build.