Property Instructions for Your Sibling: A Melbourne Carer’s Plan for Your Parent’s Home and Holdings

You’re the one managing things for Mum or Dad in Melbourne. There’s the family home in the eastern suburbs, maybe a unit they kept after downsizing intentions stalled, and possibly a shack down the coast that nobody has insured properly in years. Your sibling lives interstate and trusts you to keep the paperwork straight — but if something happens to you, or to your parent, your sibling needs a clean handover: what properties exist, who holds the title, who insures them, and who the solicitor is.

The problem

Property is the slowest asset to administer in an Australian estate. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on wills and estate planning notes that executors must locate and value every asset before distribution can proceed — and for property that means tracking down certificates of title, current insurance policies, mortgage statements, council rates notices, and any tenancy or agent agreements. When the person who knew all that is gone or incapacitated, the executor reconstructs it from scratch: phoning solicitors, hunting through filing cabinets, calling Land Use Victoria, ringing insurers who can’t confirm a policy without a number.

For a carer arrangement, the risk is doubled. You hold the operational knowledge for your parent’s property today. Your sibling — the likely co-executor or backup — holds none of it. If you’re hit by a bus tomorrow, the estate stalls while your sibling reconstructs what you already know. The cost falls on the estate. The stress falls on your family.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you record what your parent owns, where the documents live, and who you’ve named as the recipient of those instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and family carers) records, per property: the full address, ownership structure (sole, joint tenants, tenants in common, family trust), the insurer’s name and policy number, the mortgagee if any, where the certificate of title is physically stored, the conveyancer or solicitor’s contact details, the managing agent if tenanted, and your parent’s stated intentions about who should receive the property. The vault does NOT hold the deeds themselves, scanned title documents, or any login credential for property portals or banking.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not a legal 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 reporting obligations — and it’s why a Melbourne family can use it as a simple subscription rather than engaging a regulated trustee company.

How it works

  1. You add each property to the vault — address, ownership structure, insurer and policy number, mortgagee if any, location of the certificate of title, conveyancer’s contact.
  2. You name your sibling as the recipient for the property module and they accept (the vault records their consent under the Australian Privacy Principles).
  3. You record any agent or property manager contacts, and your parent’s stated beneficiary preference for each property (which the will should mirror — the vault doesn’t replace the will).
  4. If something happens to you or your parent, your sibling is notified per your release rules and sees only the property instructions module — not your other modules unless you’ve released them too.
  5. Your sibling contacts the solicitor with the property addresses, ownership structure, and document locations already in hand. Probate proceeds without the reconstruction phase.

Why this matters in Melbourne

Melbourne carers often manage parental property across multiple jurisdictions — a Victorian primary residence held in joint names with a deceased spouse, an investment unit in Queensland from the buy-to-let years, a Mornington Peninsula holiday property held through a family trust set up in the 1990s. Each has a different title registry, a different insurer, and possibly a different solicitor. The Supreme Court of Victoria’s probate process moves at the speed of the slowest document — and missing insurance details mean a property goes uninsured the moment the policyholder dies, exposing the estate to real loss. A property instruction module prepared in advance closes that gap.

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 and families in Melbourne can register their first property module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and where your sibling can find it — not the title deeds themselves, not your parent’s banking logins, and not the property.