For wealth transfer professionals
Plat. is a real-time design and presentation tool for estate planning and revocable trust funding. Build the structure on screen while the client watches, then turn that same structure into an asset-by-asset retitling checklist — with a responsible party against every checklist item.
It runs in your browser, and every client is one .plat file on your own
computer. Built for everyone at the table: attorneys, trust officers, wealth and estate
strategists, CPAs and financial advisors.
.plat file per clientWhat Plat. does
Sign in and Plat. opens in the tab you are already in — no installer, no admin rights,
no browser extension, nothing for IT to approve. Client data is saved to and loaded from
your own computer as a .plat file. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is retained
by us, and no AI reads or generates any part of a client's plan.
Estate planning meetings are increasingly virtual. Plat. is built for that: share your screen (or the optional client screen) in a platform such as Zoom or Teams, and change the structure while the client is watching. Rename a trust, add a child, switch from a portability plan to an AB plan — the diagram redraws immediately. A phase-by-phase reveal walks the client through what happens at each death.
Few tools help you lead with funding. It is usually left until after the documents are signed, through a generic memo that will never be read or followed. Plat. puts funding in the meeting: drag assets into a joint trust or separate trusts, then produce an asset-by-asset checklist that names the retitling instruction and the responsible party.
Plat. is a set of tools that will be expanded over time. Future plats — client intake, entity maps, planning-strategy
illustrations, project management checklists — read and write the same file format, so
one client file carries forward. Open a client's .plat in a new plat and
the names, children, fiduciary roles and asset data come with it.
Real-time
Every box on the board is editable in place. Change a name and it is reflected through every trust, bullet and instruction on the page. Flip the survivorship scenario and the whole diagram re-reads from the other spouse's point of view.
The part everyone skips
An unfunded revocable trust is an expensive piece of paper. Plat. moves funding to the front of the engagement, where the client is still in the room and still paying attention.
Enter each asset once. Plat. places it in probate, non-probate or trust based on how it is currently titled. Optional dollar value inputs are totalled in each column so the client can see, in dollars, how much of the estate the trust is actually going to control.
Drag an asset into a trust and it is funded. Drag it back out and it isn't. Business interests can be layered — an asset into an LLC, then the LLC interest into the revocable trust — and beneficiary designations can point at sub-trusts that don't exist yet.
Every asset gets a written retitling instruction and a named responsible party — client, attorney, trust officer, CPA, financial advisor. The progress bar is honest about how much is left. Everyone on the team can get engaged in the process.
The .plat file
Plat. has no database, no cloud storage and no AI applied to your data. When you save, the browser writes a
single .plat file wherever you tell it to — your document management system,
your matter folder, an encrypted drive. When you open, it reads that file back. That is the
entire storage model.
It means the confidentiality analysis is the same one you already do for a Word or .pdf document — and it means nothing needs approving by an institution whose compliance team will not sign off on another SaaS vendor holding client records, because Plat. holds none.
Signing in with your subscriber email is how we check your subscription and open the tool. It is not where your client files go — those are never transmitted.
What's coming
The estate plan and funding plat is the first. Each new plat is another standalone file that reads the same client data, so nothing is re-keyed.
Plan structure, fiduciary roles, funding board and funding checklist.
Collect the family, the fiduciaries and the balance sheet once, then feed every other plat from it.
Purpose-built boards for gifting, ILITs, SLATs, GRATs and other strategies — same look, same file.
Checklists that run a strategy from engagement to completion, with the same responsible-party accountability as funding.
With future expansions, planning for trusts such as the SLAT, CRAT and GRAT will start with Plat.
Who gets these. The plats above are included with Circle membership and with a direct subscription. A paid State of Estates subscription includes Estate Plan & Trust Funding — the plat available today. Compare the three ways in.
Use Plat. yourself
State of Estates is Griffin Bridgers' newsletter on estate planning and wealth transfer, at griffinbridgers.substack.com. Plat. comes with a paid subscription. There is nothing to redeem and no license key to keep track of — your subscription itself is the access.
Every subscriber can book a working session. Once you are subscribed, reach out and we will schedule a collaborative training — we go through Plat. together on a call, using a matter of your own, so you finish with something you can present rather than a demo you have to translate. Ask for a session.
Signing in checks whether the address you gave has an active subscription, and nothing else. That check is the only thing that touches our servers — no client data ever does.
Have an expert team build it
Not ready to test or learn a new tool? Have the builders of the tool assemble plans for you! Send us the specs and we will produce the
illustration and the funding checklist for your client, in your organization's name, with
your logo on it. You get back a .plat file and a PDF, ready to present.
.plat file, so you can change it live in the meeting.Already subscribed? Ask for a training session instead. We go through Plat. together on a call, building one of your own matters as we go — the fastest way to get from subscribed to presenting. Pick A collaborative training session in the form.
This is presentation and project-management work product. Plat. does not draft documents, and nothing here is legal, tax or investment advice or an attorney-client relationship.
Questions
A current browser on Windows or Mac. That's all. Sign in and every Plat you have access to opens in the tab you're already in. There is no installer, no admin rights and nothing to get past your IT department.
In a .plat file on your computer, wherever you choose to save it. Plat. has
no database and no cloud storage. Nothing about a client's plan is transmitted anywhere.
No. Not to draft, not to summarize, not to suggest. The board shows what you told it to show. Client information is never sent to a model.
Today, Plat. is an exclusive benefit for paid subscribers to State of Estates, at griffinbridgers.substack.com. Sign in with the email address on your subscription and we send you a login code — there is no password or license key to keep track of. Access starts when your subscription does and stops if it lapses. Either way the client files you've saved are unaffected: they're yours, and they live on your own computer.
Two more routes are coming: membership of a Circle community for professionals serving clients of medium net worth, and a direct subscription for firms that want the tools without the newsletter or the community.
A paid State of Estates subscription includes Estate Plan & Trust Funding — the plat available today, with the plan structure board, the funding board and the funding checklist. It is a complete tool, not a trial.
The plats still to come — client intake, strategy illustrations, project management — will be included with Circle membership and with a direct subscription. Both of those routes get every plat as it ships.
Yes, and it is included with your subscription. Reach out once you have subscribed and we will schedule a collaborative session: we work through Plat. together on a call, using a matter of your own rather than a canned demo, so you finish with something you could put in front of a client.
Ask through the request form — choose A collaborative training session. There is no fee for it.
Yes. The logo slot and the footer byline are yours. Every board and every export carries your firm, bank or practice name — the sample boards on this page use a made-up one.
A PDF of the plan and the funding checklist, or a standalone HTML file that opens on any computer with no software at all — useful when the client wants to revisit it later, or show an adult child.
No. Plat. illustrates a plan and manages funding. It does not produce wills, trusts or any other instrument, and it is not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Non-attorneys should use it to illustrate and coordinate a plan, not to design one.
Yes. The .plat architecture is compatible with future tools — new fields get added, old
ones are never renamed or removed. Every plat in the set reads every other plat's files.