Online Account Instructions for Your Executor: A Brisbane Carer’s Plan for an Aging Parent’s Digital Life

You’re helping your mum or dad in Brisbane get their affairs in order while they still can. Between them there’s a Gmail account that holds twenty years of correspondence, an iCloud library with every photo of the grandkids, a Facebook account, a Bigpond email that still receives the power bill, a password manager nobody’s sure is current, and at least one loyalty program with a balance worth chasing. When the executor — usually you or a sibling — eventually has to administer the estate, none of that is in the will. The plan is to leave the executor a clear inventory of what exists and how to approach each provider, without ever handing over a password.

The problem

ASIC’s MoneySmart estate planning guidance reminds families that a will controls the distribution of the estate, but it doesn’t tell the executor what the deceased actually had — and online accounts are almost never enumerated anywhere. The result is predictable: photo libraries effectively locked forever, an email account that’s still receiving important correspondence but can’t be opened, a Facebook profile nobody can memorialise because no one knows the email address it’s tied to, and a password manager whose recovery path was never set up.

Each provider has its own deceased-user process. Google has Inactive Account Manager. Apple has a Legacy Contact. Facebook has a memorialisation request. Microsoft has a next-of-kin process. None of them work retroactively if no one knows the account existed in the first place. Your executor’s job isn’t to log in — it’s to contact the right provider with proof of authority and ask for the right thing. That requires an inventory.

What the Asset Instruction Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you (or your parent, with your help) record what online accounts exist, the username or email identifying each one, whether a recovery contact or legacy contact has been configured at the provider, and what your parent’s preference is for each account — memorialise, close, archive, or transfer. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) stores the inventory and the closure preferences. It does NOT store passwords, recovery codes, 2FA seeds, or password manager master keys. Your executor sees the inventory you’ve prepared for them, only when you’ve released it.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a custody service, not a credential store, and not a financial advice service. It’s an instructions register. That’s what keeps it outside the AFSL regime (Corporations Act Part 7.6) and outside AUSTRAC reporting obligations — and it’s why it can be a simple subscription rather than a regulated product. It also means the vault holds personal information about both your parent and the executor, governed by the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988.

How it works

  1. You sit down with your parent and list every online account you can find — email, cloud storage, social media, photo library, password manager, loyalty programs. Each entry records provider name and the username or email used to log in. No passwords.
  2. For each account, you record your parent’s preference: memorialise, close, archive and download, or transfer to a family member. You also record whether a provider-side legacy/recovery contact has been configured (Google Inactive Account Manager, Apple Legacy Contact, Facebook Legacy Contact).
  3. You name the executor as the recipient for the online accounts module, and they accept (the vault records their consent).
  4. If something happens, the executor is notified per your release rules and sees only the online accounts module — not other modules unless you’ve released them too.
  5. The executor contacts each provider directly using the inventory, the identifier, and the death certificate, and follows that provider’s deceased-user process. The vault accelerates the enumeration step — it does not bypass the provider’s verification.

Why this matters in Brisbane

Brisbane families often span South East Queensland and beyond — an aging parent in Brisbane, adult children in Toowoomba, the Sunshine Coast, or interstate. The executor frequently isn’t local, isn’t sitting at the parent’s kitchen table, and can’t go through paper records or an old laptop in person. A clear digital inventory — what accounts exist, what identifier opens the conversation with each provider, what the account holder wanted done — is the difference between an executor who can administer the digital estate from Cairns or Sydney and one who simply gives up because the accounts can’t be found.

Sources

Join the waitlist

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

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when carers and families in Brisbane can register their first online accounts module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your executor can find it — not passwords, not 2FA codes, not the master key to a password manager.