Property Instructions for Your Parent’s Executor: An Adelaide Carer’s Plan for the Family Home and Beyond

You’re the one helping Mum or Dad keep their affairs in order — the Adelaide bungalow they’ve lived in for forty years, maybe a unit at Glenelg they rent out, possibly a half-share in a shack down at Victor Harbor with an uncle who’s hard to reach. Their will names an executor. What the executor will not have, when the time comes, is a clear list of which properties exist, who insures them, who holds the title documents, and which conveyancer handled the last transfer. You’re going to prepare that list now, while your parent can still confirm the details.

The problem

Property is the slowest-moving piece of most Australian estates. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on wills and estate planning is clear that an executor’s first job is to identify and protect the deceased’s assets before they can be distributed — and property is where that identification step routinely breaks down. Titles may be paper or electronic. Insurers change. Mortgages get refinanced. A holiday property held jointly with a sibling has a completely different succession path than the family home. The will names beneficiaries, but it doesn’t tell the executor where the certificate of title is filed or who at the insurer to ring when the policy renewal arrives three weeks after the funeral.

Your parent’s executor doesn’t need access to a safe or a filing cabinet on day one. They need to know: which properties exist, the exact addresses, how each one is owned (sole, joint tenants, tenants in common, through a trust), who the mortgagee is if there’s still a loan, who the insurer is, where the title documents are kept, and which solicitor or conveyancer handled the most recent transaction. Without that, the executor reconstructs it from bank statements and memory, and the estate sits open for months.

What the Asset Instruction Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: your parent (with your help) records what they own, where to find it, and who you’ve nominated to receive the instructions. The simplified version records, per property: the address, the ownership structure, the title reference and where the title document is physically kept, the mortgagee’s name and contact number, the insurer and policy number, the managing agent if it’s tenanted, and the conveyancer or solicitor who handled the last transaction. It does NOT hold the deeds themselves, the title document, or any login to land titles portals. The executor sees the property instructions module you have prepared for them, only when release is authorised.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not legal advice. It’s an instructions register. That’s what keeps it outside the AFSL regime under Corporations Act Part 7.6 and outside AUSTRAC reporting — and it’s also why a carer can set it up alongside an aging parent without engaging a regulated advice provider.

How it works

  1. You and your parent add each property to the vault — address, ownership structure, title reference, where the title document is physically stored.
  2. You record the mortgagee (if any), the insurer, the managing agent, and the last conveyancer or solicitor used. Phone numbers, not passwords.
  3. You name the executor (as appointed in your parent’s will) as the recipient for the property module. The vault records their acceptance and confirms consent, in line with the Australian Privacy Principles for handling a third party’s contact details.
  4. When the release rules you’ve set are triggered, the executor is notified and sees only the property instructions module — not your parent’s other modules unless those have also been released.
  5. The executor contacts each insurer, mortgagee, and conveyancer directly with the details from the vault. The vault accelerates the finding step — it does not replace probate, the title transfer process, or the executor’s legal duties.

Why this matters in Adelaide

Adelaide families often hold property across more than one jurisdiction — the long-held family home in the inner suburbs, a rental in a regional South Australian town, occasionally an interstate investment property bought during the 2000s. Each of those sits with a different insurer, possibly a different mortgagee, and was almost certainly handled by a different conveyancer. South Australia’s land titles are electronic, but the supporting paperwork — duplicate certificates of title where they still exist, ownership trust deeds, insurance schedules — is rarely in one place. A clear instruction set the executor can open on day one typically removes weeks of search work and keeps the estate moving while grief is still fresh.

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 in Adelaide can register their first property module on behalf of an aging parent. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how the executor can find it — not the title documents, not the deeds, and not your parent’s property itself.