Investment Instructions for Your Parent’s Executor: A Brisbane Carer’s Plan for Shares, ETFs and Crypto

You’re the one driving your mum or dad to specialist appointments in Brisbane, sorting their mail, and slowly piecing together what they actually own. There’s a CommSec account from years ago, an ETF holding through a different broker, a small parcel of crypto your dad bought during the pandemic on an exchange he can’t quite remember, and term deposits at two different banks. The executor named in the will is your sibling in Melbourne. You want to leave that executor a clean inventory — what exists, where to find it — without ever handling your parent’s passwords or recovery phrases.

The problem

Australian estates routinely lose track of investment holdings because there is no central registry an executor can search. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on wills and estate planning is clear that beneficiaries receive what the estate can identify and prove — and an executor cannot claim what they cannot find. Direct shareholdings sit under a HIN or SRN that means nothing without context. ETFs and managed funds are scattered across brokers and platforms. Crypto is worse: ASIC’s MoneySmart crypto guidance warns that lost keys mean lost coins, and there are no consumer protections to fall back on.

For a carer of an aging parent, this gets harder over time. Capacity loss is rarely a clean line — it’s a gradual erosion where your parent remembers some accounts and forgets others. If the executor only learns about an account after probate has been finalised, recovering it can cost more than it’s worth. If they never learn, the asset is simply gone.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you (or your parent, with your help) record what they own, where to find it, and who you’ve nominated to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per investment: the issuer or broker, the account identifier (HIN, SRN, broker account number, exchange name), the type of holding, and any notes the executor will need — for example, the location of paper share certificates or the custodian’s contact line.

The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your executor can find it — not your keys, recovery phrases, or hardware wallet PINs. For your parent’s crypto, the vault records which exchange the account is on and the wallet addresses that are public, so the executor can verify the holdings exist and decide whether recovery is worth pursuing. It does not — and cannot — hold seed phrases, private keys, or hardware wallet PINs.

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 under Corporations Act Part 7.6, and outside AUSTRAC’s AML/CTF reporting obligations.

How it works

  1. You sit with your parent (while they still have the capacity to confirm details) and add each holding to the vault — broker name, account number, HIN or SRN, fund name, exchange name.
  2. You name the executor from your parent’s will as the recipient for the investments module. The vault records their consent.
  3. For each crypto holding, you record what the exchange is and any public wallet addresses — and you note, in plain words, where the keys or recovery phrases are physically stored (a safe, a solicitor’s file). The vault does not store the keys themselves.
  4. When release conditions are met (per your parent’s instructions), the executor is notified and sees only the investments module — not the health module, not the personal correspondence module, unless those have been released too.
  5. The executor uses the inventory to contact each broker, registry, and exchange directly with a death certificate and grant of probate. The vault accelerates the discovery step; the legal process is unchanged.

Why this matters in Brisbane

Brisbane families increasingly hold a mix of CHESS-sponsored shares, platform-held ETFs, and crypto bought on Australian or offshore exchanges. Executors administering Queensland estates work through the Supreme Court of Queensland probate process, and the practical bottleneck is almost never the court — it’s identifying every asset before the estate is distributed. For a carer who can see the fragmentation up close, recording it now (while your parent can still confirm what’s real and what isn’t) is the single highest-leverage thing you can do for the sibling or friend who will eventually have to administer the estate.

Sources

Join the waitlist

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

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when carers in Brisbane can register their parent’s first investments module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your parent’s executor can find it — not passwords, not seed phrases, not hardware wallet PINs, and not your parent’s money.