Pet Care Instructions for Your Executor: A Melbourne Carer’s Plan for Mum’s Cat and Dog

You’re the adult child organising your mother’s affairs in Melbourne. She’s in her eighties, still in her own home in Brunswick or Bentleigh, and the household includes a fourteen-year-old cat on thyroid medication and a border collie cross who needs two walks a day. If she’s hospitalised next week or doesn’t wake up next month, the executor named in her will needs to know — within hours, not days — who agreed to take each animal, which vet holds their records, and what medication the cat needs by Friday.

The problem

When an older person is hospitalised or dies suddenly, pets are one of the first things to fall through the cracks. ASIC’s MoneySmart estate planning guidance focuses on assets and beneficiaries — wills handle money, property, and possessions, but they rarely contain the operational detail a pet needs in the first 72 hours. Executors are appointed to administer the estate, not to phone around finding someone who will take a diabetic cat.

Without a written plan, what happens in practice is predictable: the executor (often a sibling who lives interstate) arrives to an empty house with two distressed animals, no vet contact, no medication schedule, and no record of whether Aunty Jen actually agreed to take the dog or just said “oh, we’d love to” at Christmas three years ago. Animals get surrendered to shelters not because no one cared, but because no one had the information in time.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you (or your parent, with your help) record what exists, where to find it, and who should know. The simplified version records, per animal: name, breed, age, microchip number, vet clinic and phone number, current medications and dosing schedule, dietary needs, daily routine, and the named carer who has agreed in writing to take the animal — with their consent recorded in the vault. It also notes any pet trust or bequest arrangement made in the will, so the executor can cross-reference.

The Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not an advice service. It’s an instructions register. That boundary keeps it outside the AFSL regime and outside AUSTRAC reporting obligations — and it’s why it can be a simple subscription that a carer sets up for an aging parent in an afternoon.

How it works

  1. You sit down with your parent and add each pet to the vault — name, microchip, vet, medications, daily needs, behavioural notes.
  2. You contact the intended carer (the family friend, the neighbour, the cousin) and ask them directly. If they agree, they’re added to the vault as the pet’s named carer and confirm their consent.
  3. You name the executor as the recipient of the pets module. The executor accepts the role in the vault.
  4. When your parent is hospitalised or dies, your release rules trigger. The executor sees the pets module immediately — animal-by-animal care plan, vet contact, named carer, medication schedule.
  5. The executor calls the named carer, hands over the animal with the vet records and medication notes, and records the transfer. The will handles any bequest of money attached to the animal’s care; the vault handles the operational handover.

Why this matters in Melbourne

Melbourne has one of the highest rates of pet ownership among older Australians, and the city’s animal shelters — the Lost Dogs’ Home in North Melbourne, RSPCA Victoria in Burwood East — receive surrendered animals from deceased estates every week. Many of those surrenders are preventable: a named carer existed somewhere in the family, but the executor didn’t know who, or the vet records were locked in a phone no one could open. A pets module with the carer named, consented, and contactable means the executor can make one phone call instead of running a missing-persons investigation while also organising a funeral.

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 organising an aging parent’s affairs in Melbourne can register a first pets module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what your parent’s animals need and who has agreed to take them — so the executor can act in hours, not days.