What's new at Luminary: September update
Leading this month is the Luminary AI Assistant, built into every household with a full view of a client's estate and a citation behind every answer. We've also added a library of ready-made presentation templates, expanded our tax engine to calculate inheritance tax in all five states that levy one, and more.
Luminary AI Assistant: Chat Across the Entire Client Household
Luminary's AI has grown from answering questions about a single document into a conversational assistant with a complete view of a client's estate that delivers insights, not just information.
Open the assistant from anywhere in a household, whether you're on the overview, a document, an entity, or the waterfall, and ask a question the way you'd ask a colleague. It draws on everything Luminary holds for that family: the documents you've uploaded, the people and entities in the plan, the roles and powers they hold, and the analysis your team has already run.
Three kinds of questions work especially well:
- Questions about the plan. "How much will go to charity?" "Who are the trustees?" "What happens if their son dies before them?"
- Questions about outcomes. How assets pass at each stage, what each beneficiary ends up with, and how estate taxes are calculated.
- Questions about Luminary. "How do I enter dispositions?" or "Where do I find trust details?" The assistant answers and points you to the right screen.
Responses carry citations that link back to the exact source material, and documents open in an expanded viewer right beside the conversation so you can read the original language yourself. The assistant also recognizes the memos and summaries your team has already produced for that household, so it builds on that work rather than repeating it. When a question calls for professional tax or legal judgment, it says so rather than overstepping.
Two modes shape how it responds: “Fast” for quick lookups and navigation help, and “Thinking” for questions that call for deeper reasoning and fuller citations. You can now dictate your prompt as well, so a question can be spoken the moment it occurs to you and the assistant transcribes it into the conversation.
A Ready-to-Use Library of Presentation Templates
Luminary now includes a set of default presentation templates available the moment you create a new presentation: document inventory and review, estate plan review and illustration, proposed estate planning strategies, and beneficiary outcomes. Each template explains who it's for and the scenario it fits, and any user or admin can duplicate one and save it as their own to tailor. You can also add template level notes to the waterfall overview bundle to capture assumptions or context, and include entity overview pages with control over which entity types appear.
Let Luminary Perfect Your Waterfall Layout
One click on the new clean up option and Luminary handles the spacing and alignment of every node and connecting line for you, preserving the exact order you've arranged. It sits alongside auto layout, which organizes nodes into a standard sequence optimized for straight lines and readability, so whether you want to structure the diagram or simply polish the structure you've built, the visual work is done for you. Either way, you get a client-ready diagram without touching a single node by hand.
Inheritance Tax Coverage in All Five States
With Maryland, Nebraska, and Kentucky joining Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Luminary now calculates inheritance tax in every state that levies one. When a disposition is made to a non-exempt beneficiary, the estate waterfall calculates the applicable tax automatically and folds it into the client's total tax liability. Our tax engine accounts for how each state's rules interact with the rest of the picture, including Maryland's credit between inheritance and estate tax and Nebraska's deduction for federal estate tax paid, so the total burden reflects reality.
A Family Tree That Reflects Everyone Important
The family tree now supports non-family members, so friends and other non-relatives can appear alongside relatives as key people in a client's plan, a natural fit for grantors without children whose primary beneficiaries often sit outside the family. Because these individuals stay hidden on the diagram by default, you decide exactly who to surface and when, tailoring the tree to the client sitting in front of you. It's one more way to shape the visual around the conversation you want to have, so every meeting focuses on the people who matter most to that client.
Come Find Us at Future Proof
The Luminary team will be at Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, September 14-17, at booth 643 in Zone 3. Stop by to talk through the latest from the platform, including recent updates to our proprietary tax engine, the flexibility and customization now available in client presentations, and where agentic workflows are headed. Swing by Tuesday between 11am and 3pm for a fresh blended smoothie while you're at it.
Named a Two-Time ThinkAdvisor Luminaries Finalist
Luminary is a finalist in two categories at this year's ThinkAdvisor Luminaries Awards: AI Innovation and Impact, and Financial Planning: Product or Service Innovation. Both point to the same foundation, a document intelligence engine that turns decades of trusts, wills, and amendments into structured, citation-backed data. Winners are announced December 3 in New York.
Catch Us at Carson's Excell Conference
Luminary will be at Excell, Carson Group's flagship gathering for advisors and firm owners, September 30 through October 2 in Denver. Come speak with the team to see how estate planning fits into the growth and client experience conversations Excell is built around, from document intelligence through client-ready presentations. If you're attending and want dedicated time with our team, we'd love to get on your calendar.