Pet Care Instructions for Your Sibling: An Adelaide Plan for Mum or Dad’s Animals When Things Change

You’re the one in Adelaide who drives across to check on your parent — the medication routine, the shopping, the GP appointments. There’s also a dog, or a cat, or both. Your sibling lives interstate and has already agreed that if Mum goes to hospital or into care, the animals come to them. None of that agreement is written down anywhere, the vet’s number is on a fridge magnet, and the dog’s arthritis medication schedule lives only in your parent’s head.

The problem

When an older person is admitted to hospital unexpectedly, or moves into residential care, the household animals often have nowhere obvious to go. ASIC’s MoneySmart estate planning guidance focuses families on wills and powers of attorney — useful for the human paperwork, but silent on the practical question of who takes the cat tonight and what it eats. Pets fall into a gap: not part of the formal estate process, not covered by an advance care directive, and not something a hospital social worker can solve at 9pm on a Tuesday.

The result is predictable and avoidable. Animals get surrendered to Adelaide shelters because no one could reach the sibling who had agreed to take them, no one knew the vet, and no one knew which tablets the dog needed twice a day. Your sibling doesn’t need access to your parent’s email. They need a single, clear instruction set: which animals, what they need daily, who the vet is, and confirmation that the sibling has agreed to be the carer.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you record what exists in your parent’s household, where to find it, and who should be told. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per pet: name, species and breed, age, daily feeding and medication schedule, the treating vet’s name and phone number, any chronic conditions, microchip number, and the named carer — with that carer’s consent recorded in the vault. It does NOT hold credentials, it does NOT take custody of the animal, and it is NOT a pet trust or a legal bequest instrument.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not an advice service. It’s an instructions register. That’s what keeps it outside the AFSL regime and outside AUSTRAC reporting — and it’s also why the same vault can hold a pet care module alongside a superannuation module without becoming a regulated product.

How it works

  1. You (or your parent, with your help) add each animal to the pets module — name, vet, daily routine, medications, microchip.
  2. You name your sibling as the intended carer. The vault sends them a consent prompt and records their acceptance, with a timestamp.
  3. You set the release rules — typically “release on hospitalisation notification” and “release on death”, separately from financial modules.
  4. If something happens, your sibling is notified per those rules and sees only the pets instructions module. They get the vet’s number, the feeding schedule, and the microchip number — not your parent’s bank details or super.
  5. Your sibling contacts the vet directly to transfer records, and collects the animals with a clear handover sheet. No shelter intake, no detective work.

Why this matters in Adelaide

Adelaide has a high proportion of older residents ageing in place in suburban houses where pets are part of daily life — and a high proportion of adult children who live in Melbourne, Sydney, or Perth. The gap between “Mum was admitted to the Royal Adelaide last night” and “the sibling interstate arrives to collect the dog” is typically 24–72 hours. That window is where animals get surrendered. A pre-recorded instruction module, with the carer’s consent already captured, closes the window — the neighbour or the hospital social worker has one document, one phone number, one named person who has already said yes.

Sources

Join the waitlist

Join the waitlist — first access when the Digital Legacy Vault opens for Adelaide carers

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when carers of aging parents in Adelaide can register their first pet care module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your sibling can find it — not credentials, not custody of the animals, and not a substitute for a vet or a will.