Estate planning is the fastest-growing category in advisor technology — adoption doubled from 11% to 22% of advisors between 2023 and 2025 (Kitces Research) — and it’s the stickiest conversation you can have with a client’s whole family. Trusted Directive gives your clients a secure document vault and gives you the two things a vault alone never delivers: a reason to call, and revenue instead of another software bill.
You help a client organize their estate, and then — nothing. No system tells you when their documents age out, when a life event creates a gap, or when the family you hoped to retain across a generational transfer has never even heard your name.
An estate plan older than a few years is a liability wearing a completed-task disguise. Nobody is watching the expiration dates — including the client.
Heirs who never interacted with their parents’ advisor rarely stay. The vault makes you the family’s point of continuity before the transfer, not a stranger after it.
Every advisor vault subscription we reviewed charges the advisor — monthly seats or per-client fees. A value-add that shows up as an expense line gets cut.
Send vault invitations from your partner portal. Clients get a secure home for their estate documents; you get credited as the professional who brought it to them. Their first 30 days are free.
As clients upload, the vault classifies documents and flags what’s missing or expiring — per client, across your whole book. “12 clients have an estate plan older than 3 years” is a list of calls to make, generated for you.
Your Practice Intelligence Dashboard shows metadata only — document categories, dates, gaps, and events. Client privacy is enforced by the architecture, which is exactly what makes clients comfortable saying yes.
You earn a flat 25% of every client payment — $30 per client in year one, $15 every renewal year, for as long as they remain subscribed. Paid at each billing event, not as a one-time bounty.
Free for your practice, 25% on every client payment — a structure no incumbent advertises. Estate planning software for advisors already exists (Everplans Professional and Trustworthy for Advisors are real products with real users); here’s the structural difference.
For registered reps and IARs, this payout is an outside business activity: expect to give your firm prior written notice and to disclose it to clients — see the Partner Program Terms.
Two ways the money can flow
Illustrative — same client, two different business models: the vault you pay for versus the vault that pays you and hands you the reason to call.
| Trusted Directive | Typical advisor vault platforms | |
|---|---|---|
| Advisor cost | Free — no seats, no per-client fees | Advisor pays: per-client/yr fees or monthly per-seat subscriptions |
| Advisor revenue | 25% evergreen commission on client payments | No incumbent we reviewed (as of July 2026) advertises a turnkey flat-percentage recurring commission on a client-paid vault; SideDrawer offers negotiated reseller margin — a different structure |
| Emergency access model | Verify-Silence Release Protocol (in development for alpha) — designed to cover incapacity and death | Reactive: deputy reports a death, or a death certificate + ID check is required |
| What the advisor sees | Metadata + document classification (gap and retention alerts rolling out during alpha) — never document content | Varies; often shared-folder access to the documents themselves |
Where clients are also served by an estate attorney, we work alongside — not around — that relationship. Estate attorney? The attorney program is different, on purpose →
We’re onboarding a small founding group of advisors this year. The demo is 30 minutes with our team: the client vault, your dashboard, the invitation flow, and the commission math — no deck, no follow-up sequence.
No sales team, no drip sequence — we reply personally within one business day.
Nothing. Advisors join free — there is no seat fee, no per-client fee, and no platform subscription. Your clients pay for their own vaults ($120 year one, $60/year after, 30-day free trial), and you earn a flat 25% commission on every payment, for as long as they stay.
No — and that’s deliberate. Partners see document metadata only: category, upload date, expiration date, and event signals like “gap detected.” Never the content, never the file name. Your client relationship stays a trusted one because the architecture enforces it.
Two structural differences. First, economics: those platforms charge the advisor; Trusted Directive is free for advisors and pays a 25% evergreen commission instead. Second, protocol: their emergency access is reactive — a deputy reports a death or a death certificate is filed. Trusted Directive’s Verify-Silence Release Protocol is designed to work proactively and cover incapacity, where no death certificate exists — a capability in development for alpha.
The vault automatically classifies documents into 18 categories today. Gap alerts that turn missing or expiring categories into prompts — “4 clients have no current healthcare directive,” “12 clients have an estate plan older than 3 years” — are rolling out during alpha. Each alert is a warm, legitimate reason to call a client.
Trusted Directive is onboarding a small founding group of advisor partners now. Request a demo and we will walk you through the partner portal, the commission structure, and the client invitation flow personally.
If you are a registered representative or investment adviser representative, this 25% payout is an outside business activity under FINRA Rule 3270: you are expected to give your firm prior written notice and to disclose the arrangement to your clients before participating. We provide a one-page program description for your firm’s compliance review, and a non-cash alternative — co-branding credit and client-retention reporting — where your firm restricts outside compensation. See the Partner Program Terms.
Not ready for a demo? Ask a question instead → More client-side answers — renewal price, cancellation, who sees what — live in the FAQ, and clients weighing alternatives can read our honest Everplans and GoodTrust comparisons.