Investment Instructions for Your Parent’s Executor: A Melbourne Carer’s Inventory of Shares, ETFs and Crypto

You’re the adult child organising your father’s affairs from a kitchen table in Brunswick or Box Hill. He’s still sharp on his good days, but the diagnosis means you both know the direction. Between his CommSec account, a half-remembered Vanguard ETF, two CHESS-sponsored holdings from a long-ago demutualisation, a term deposit at a neobank, and the Bitcoin he bought “for fun” in 2018, his executor — your sister in Geelong — will be hunting blind unless someone writes it down now. The plan is to build that inventory with him while he can still confirm it, and release it to her only when the will takes effect.

The problem

Australian estates routinely lose track of investments because there is no central registry an executor can query. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on wills and estate planning is clear that the executor’s job is to identify, collect and distribute assets — but identification is the part the system leaves to families. A CHESS-sponsored holding has a HIN tied to a specific broker; an issuer-sponsored holding has an SRN tied to a share registry; an ETF unit is held through a different platform again. Each one needs a different phone call.

Crypto is worse. ASIC’s MoneySmart warnings on crypto assets stress that there is no consumer protection scheme, no central record, and that lost keys mean lost coins — full stop. If your father holds Bitcoin on a hardware wallet and no one knows the wallet exists, the coins are gone and the estate will never know what was missed. If someone knows the wallet exists but not the seed phrase, the coins are still gone — but at least the executor can stop paying a forensic firm to look for assets that cannot be recovered.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: your father (with your help) records what he owns and where to find it, and names his executor as the recipient. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per investment: issuer or fund name, broker or platform, HIN or SRN or account identifier, approximate holding date, and any notes about where paper certificates or hardware wallets are physically located. 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. It does not hold exchange passwords, MyGov codes, or broker logins either.

That boundary is what keeps the Digital Legacy Vault outside the AFSL regime under Corporations Act Part 7.6 and outside AUSTRAC’s AML/CTF reporting obligations. The vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not advice on what to buy, sell or hold. It is an instructions register — which is why it can be a simple subscription rather than a regulated product.

How it works

  1. You sit with your father and add each investment to his vault — issuer, broker, HIN or SRN, account identifier, and any physical location notes (e.g. “hardware wallet in the top drawer of the desk”).
  2. He names his executor (your sister) as the recipient for the investments module, and she accepts. The vault records her consent under the Australian Privacy Principles.
  3. For the crypto holdings, he records what exists — the exchange name and account email, or the existence and location of the hardware wallet — but not the seed phrase or PIN. Those stay where he keeps them now (a safe, a sealed envelope with the solicitor, wherever).
  4. On release — per the rules he sets, typically grant of probate — your sister sees only the investments module. She does not see his medical directive module or his funeral wishes unless he released those to her too.
  5. She contacts each broker, registry and exchange directly with the identifiers, a death certificate and grant of probate. The vault accelerates the finding step, not the legal process.

Why this matters in Melbourne

Melbourne households over sixty often hold the legacy of decades of Australian retail investing — Telstra and CBA float allocations still issuer-sponsored at Computershare or Link, a CommSec account opened in the 2000s, an industry-fund-linked ETF, and increasingly a small crypto holding from the 2017–2021 retail wave. Victorian probate registry timelines already run weeks; an executor working from incomplete information adds months while she chases share registries one by one. A clear, current inventory — built while the parent can still confirm it — is the single largest time-saver an executor will ever receive.

Sources

Join the waitlist

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

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when carers of aging parents in Melbourne can register a first investments module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your executor can find it — not your father’s seed phrases, not his hardware wallet PIN, and not his broker password.