Personal Effects Instructions for Your Sibling: A Perth Carer’s Plan for Mum’s Jewellery, Dad’s Tools, and Everything in Between

You’re the adult child who lives closest to your aging parent in Perth. You’ve taken on the organising — the medical appointments, the bills, the slow conversation about what happens later. Your sibling lives interstate, or overseas, or just down the road but works full-time. When the time comes, the two of you will divide a house full of things: your mother’s rings, your father’s record collection, the painting from the hallway, the old ute. The plan is to record — now, while your parent can still tell you — who gets what and why, so you and your sibling don’t end up arguing about a teapot.

The problem

Personal effects cause more family disputes per dollar than any other estate category. A will usually says “divide the personal chattels equally between my children” and stops there. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on wills and estate planning notes that wills set the broad framework but rarely itemise sentimental possessions — which means the actual distribution happens around a kitchen table, between siblings, often within weeks of a funeral, with no written record of what the parent actually wanted.

The items that cause the worst fights are almost never the most valuable. It’s the cricket bat signed in 1974. It’s the wedding ring Mum said for years would go to one daughter, then mentioned offhand to the other. It’s the kelim rug nobody remembered was bought in Iran in 1968. Your sibling doesn’t need a password or a key — they need a list: what’s in the house, what each item is roughly worth, who your parent wanted it to go to, and which appraiser to call for the things you don’t recognise.

What the Asset Instruction Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you (or you and your parent together) record what exists, where it is, and who should receive it. The simplified version records, per item or collection: a short description, an approximate valuation or the name of an appraiser who can assess it, the location in the house, the intended recipient as your parent expressed it, and any sentimental note — the story behind the piece, why it matters, who gave it. Your sibling sees the inventory you’ve prepared for them, only when you’ve authorised release.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your sibling can find it — not the items themselves, not appraiser fees, and not legal advice on how the estate should be divided. It’s not a financial product, not a custody service, not an advice service. That’s what keeps it outside the AFSL regime (Corporations Act Part 7.6) and outside AUSTRAC reporting — and it’s also what lets your parent dictate the entries in plain language while they still can.

How it works

  1. You sit with your parent and walk through the house room by room. Each significant item — jewellery, art, instruments, vehicles, collections — gets a short entry: description, location, rough value, and the named recipient.
  2. For items where valuation is uncertain (an antique, a small art collection, a stamp album), you record the contact details of an appraiser rather than guessing a number.
  3. You name your sibling as the recipient for the personal effects module. They accept; the vault records their consent under the Privacy Act’s framework for personal information about third parties.
  4. If your parent loses capacity or dies, you release the personal effects module to your sibling per the rules you’ve set. They see only that module — not your parent’s superannuation, banking, or other modules unless those have been released too.
  5. You and your sibling work through the inventory together, with your parent’s recorded preferences in front of you. Disagreements still happen; they just don’t happen in the dark.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth families are often split across distance — one child in Perth doing the day-to-day care, siblings in Melbourne, Sydney, or overseas. That geography changes how personal effects get distributed. The Perth-based carer is usually the one in the house, sorting through cupboards in the weeks after a death, while the interstate sibling sees the result by photograph. A written record of what each item is, what it’s worth, and who it was meant for protects both siblings: the carer from suspicion, the distant sibling from feeling shut out. It also slows down the well-meaning but irreversible decision to “just give it to the op shop” — the antique that turns out to have been worth four thousand dollars, the bracelet that turns out to have been your grandmother’s.

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 carers and families in Perth can register their first personal effects module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your sibling can find it — not your parent’s possessions, not their bank cards, and not legal advice on how to divide the estate.