Pet Care Instructions for Your Executor: A Brisbane Carer’s Plan for Mum’s Dog When the Hospital Call Comes

You’re the one who manages your mother’s affairs now. She lives in her own place in Brisbane with a fourteen-year-old kelpie cross called Bonnie, two daily medications, and a vet at Toowong who knows the whole history. If your mother goes into hospital tomorrow — or doesn’t come home from it — Bonnie’s fate sits with whoever can move fastest. The plan is to give your mother’s executor a written instruction module that names the agreed carer, the vet, the medications, and the daily routine, so Bonnie isn’t surrendered to a shelter while the estate is being sorted.

The problem

When an older Australian is hospitalised or dies, pets are often the last thing anyone has documented and the first thing that has to be solved. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on wills and estate planning notes that executors are responsible for administering the deceased’s estate — but a pet isn’t a tidy estate asset. It’s a living animal that needs feeding tonight, medication tomorrow, and a permanent home decided within days. If the executor doesn’t know who agreed to take the animal, where the vet is, or what the medication routine looks like, the practical default is a shelter intake — sometimes within forty-eight hours of the owner’s hospitalisation.

Your mother may have mentioned to you, verbally, that her sister will take Bonnie. The sister may or may not remember that conversation. The executor (who might be you, or might be your brother in Townsville) may not know any of it. The vet records, the medication names, the brand of food Bonnie tolerates — all of that lives in your mother’s head and on one shelf in her laundry.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: a place where your mother (with your help, as her carer) records what exists, where to find it, and who should be told. The simplified version records, per pet: the animal’s name and microchip number, the vet clinic and phone number, current medications and dose schedule, daily feeding and exercise notes, the named intended carer plus a recorded consent that they have agreed to take the animal, and any pet trust or bequest arrangements set up in the will. The executor sees this module — and only this module — when release rules are triggered.

The Digital Legacy Vault does NOT hold logins, MyGov codes, banking credentials, or the animal itself. It is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not an advice service. It’s an instructions register. That boundary keeps the Digital Legacy Vault outside the AFSL regime and outside AUSTRAC reporting — and it’s why the vault can be a simple subscription rather than a regulated product.

How it works

  1. You and your mother add Bonnie to her vault — name, microchip, vet contact, medication list, daily routine, food brand.
  2. You record the intended carer (your aunt) and the vault sends her a consent request. She accepts in writing, and the vault stores that acceptance.
  3. You name your mother’s executor as the recipient for the pets module. The executor accepts the role for that module.
  4. If your mother is hospitalised or dies, the executor is notified per the release rules and sees only the pets module — the vet’s number, the carer’s name and signed consent, and the medication schedule.
  5. The executor contacts the named carer and the vet within hours, not weeks. Bonnie goes to a home that already agreed to take her, with the right meds and the right food, while the rest of the estate is administered on its own timeline.

Why this matters in Brisbane

Brisbane’s older population is heavily concentrated in single-occupant households across the western and bayside suburbs, and the RSPCA Queensland intake centre at Wacol receives a steady stream of pets surrendered after owner hospitalisation or death — often by executors or family members who simply don’t know what else to do in the first forty-eight hours. A clear instruction module, with the carer already named and the vet already on file, removes that default. It also protects the executor: under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles, vet records and carer contact details are personal information, and the vault gives the executor a lawful, consented channel to receive exactly the information they need to act — and nothing else.

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 of aging parents in Brisbane can register their first pets module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your mother’s executor can find it — the vet, the carer, the medication schedule — not the animal itself, and not any of your mother’s logins.