Investment Instructions for Your Parent’s Executor: A Perth Carer’s Plan for Shares, ETFs and Crypto

You’re the adult child organising your mum or dad’s affairs in Perth. There’s a CommSec account that’s been quiet since 2014, a small ETF parcel held through a different broker, a Vanguard managed fund, and — depending on which year of life you ask about — somewhere between $0 and “a few thousand” in Bitcoin sitting on an exchange or, possibly, on a hardware wallet in a drawer. The executor named in your parent’s will is your sibling interstate. They will not find any of this on their own.

The problem

When an estate goes to probate in Western Australia, the executor’s first job is to identify the assets. ASIC’s MoneySmart estate planning guidance is clear that an executor must locate and value everything the deceased owned before the estate can be administered. There is no central registry of Australian shareholdings, no national ETF lookup, and — critically — no registry at all for crypto holdings. ASIC’s crypto guidance reinforces the point that crypto assets sit outside the consumer protection framework and that lost access generally means lost value.

For a parent whose memory is fading, the practical risk is twofold. First, accounts they opened a decade ago get forgotten — the HIN sits with one broker, the SRN sits issuer-sponsored with another, and nobody can prove the parcel existed without the paperwork. Second, the crypto question becomes a black hole for the executor: did Dad actually hold any? On which exchange? Was the hardware wallet ever funded? Without instructions, your sibling will either waste estate funds chasing ghosts or quietly write off holdings that were real.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register for individuals and families. The simplified version records, per investment line: issuer or fund name, broker or exchange, account identifier (HIN, SRN, member number, exchange account email), the approximate holding as last reviewed, and the date of that review. For crypto specifically, it records which exchange holds an account and whether a hardware wallet exists and where it is physically located.

The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your executor can find it — not your parent’s keys, recovery phrases, or hardware wallet PINs. It also does not hold broker passwords, exchange logins, or two-factor codes. Your executor sees the inventory you’ve prepared on your parent’s behalf, only when the release rules are triggered.

This boundary is deliberate. Because the Digital Legacy Vault holds no financial products, no custody, and no advice on what to buy or sell, it sits outside the AFSL regime under Corporations Act Part 7.6 and outside AUSTRAC’s AML/CTF reporting obligations. It’s a record, not a financial service.

How it works

  1. Sitting with your parent (or working from the paperwork they’ve kept), you add each investment to the vault — issuer, broker or exchange, HIN/SRN/account identifier, last-reviewed balance and date.
  2. For any crypto holdings, you record the exchange name and account email, and — if a hardware wallet exists — its physical location and make. You do not record seed phrases or PINs. The vault will not accept them.
  3. You name your sibling (the executor) as the recipient for the investments module. They accept and the vault records their consent.
  4. On the trigger event you’ve set (typically death, evidenced by certificate), the executor is notified and sees the investments module — not your parent’s other modules unless released.
  5. Your sibling contacts each broker, share registry (Computershare, Link) and exchange directly with the identifiers, supplies grant of probate, and follows each provider’s deceased-estate process.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth families are often spread across the country — the parent in WA, the executor in Melbourne or Sydney, the carer doing the legwork locally. The two-hour time difference and the distance turn every “can you just check the filing cabinet?” question into a multi-day delay. A clear, pre-prepared instructions register means the interstate executor can start contacting brokers and exchanges in the first week, rather than booking a flight to West Perth to sort through paper. For crypto, the vault gives the executor something invaluable: a definite list of what to investigate and what to rule out, so the estate doesn’t burn legal fees on a forensic search for holdings that were never there.

Sources

Join the waitlist

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

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when adult children organising an older parent’s affairs in Perth can register their first investments module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your parent’s executor can find it — not keys, not recovery phrases, not hardware wallet PINs, and not the assets themselves.