Property Instructions for Your Sibling: An Adelaide Carer’s Plan for Mum or Dad’s Home, Rental, and Title Documents

You’re the one who turns up. You drive Mum to the cardiologist, you sort the rates notice when it arrives in the wrong pile, you know which drawer the title deed might be in. Your sibling lives interstate or across town and means well, but if something happens to your parent tomorrow, they will not know that the Glenelg unit is jointly owned with a cousin, that the family home’s title is held by the solicitor in Unley, or that the tenant in the investment property pays rent through an agent in Norwood. This door is the plan to fix that — without handing over any documents or logins.

The problem

Property is the slowest-moving asset in an Australian estate. ASIC’s MoneySmart estate planning guidance is clear that what happens to property at death depends on how it’s owned (sole, joint tenants, tenants in common, through a trust), whether it’s part of the estate, and whether the executor can locate the documents and contacts needed to deal with it. Executors routinely spend the first months reconstructing a portfolio: which addresses, which insurer, which mortgagee, which conveyancer, which property manager, where the certificate of title actually sits.

For an aging parent, that detective work usually falls on the child who was already doing the caring — you. If you’re managing your parent’s affairs and your sibling is the named executor or co-beneficiary, they need an instructions set they can act on immediately: addresses, ownership structure, who insures each property, who holds the title, who manages tenants. They do not need (and should not have) your parent’s MyGov password or the keys to the filing cabinet.

What the Asset Instruction Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you record what your parent owns, where to find it, and who you’ve nominated to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per property: the address, ownership structure (sole, joint tenants, tenants in common, or held through a trust), the insurer and policy number, the mortgagee contact if there’s a loan, where the certificate of title is kept (solicitor’s office, bank safe custody, home safe), the conveyancer or solicitor’s contact, the property manager or tenant contact for investments, and your parent’s intended beneficiary preferences for each property.

The vault does NOT hold the deeds themselves, the title documents, or any login credential. Your sibling sees the inventory you’ve prepared for them, only when you’ve released it.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not a legal or financial advice service. 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 why it can be a straightforward subscription rather than a regulated product.

How it works

  1. You (with your parent, ideally) add each property to the vault — address, ownership structure, insurer, mortgagee, conveyancer, where the title is held, property manager for any rental.
  2. You name your sibling as the recipient for the property module and they accept (the vault records their consent under the Privacy Act, which governs how the personal information of named third parties is handled).
  3. You note where the original certificate of title lives — solicitor’s name, suburb, file reference — and the vault prompts you to confirm annually that nothing has moved.
  4. If your parent loses capacity or passes away, your sibling is notified per your release rules and sees only the property instructions module — not the super, banking, or medical modules unless you’ve released them too.
  5. Your sibling contacts the named solicitor, insurer, and property manager directly. They handle probate and conveyancing in the normal way. The vault accelerates the finding step, not the legal process.

Why this matters in Adelaide

Adelaide families often hold property in patterns that confuse interstate executors: a long-held family home in the inner ring (Unley, Norwood, Prospect), a beach unit at Glenelg or Henley, sometimes an investment property in the Hills or a share in a country block. Titles may sit with a family solicitor who’s been the trusted contact for thirty years — but whose name your sibling in Sydney has never heard. Conveyancing in South Australia runs through Land Services SA, and the executor needs the title reference and ownership structure before anything moves. A clear instruction set — what exists, how it’s owned, where the documents live, who to call — typically saves an Adelaide family weeks of solicitor-hunting and reduces the chance of an asset being missed in the estate altogether.

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 property module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what your parent owns and how your sibling can find it — not the title deeds, not the solicitor’s file, and not the property itself.