Property Instructions for a Trusted Friend: A Perth Carer’s Plan for an Aging Parent’s Home

You’re helping an older parent in Perth get their affairs in order. There’s the family home in the suburbs, perhaps a small investment unit, and a holiday place down the coast that hasn’t been visited in years. The children live interstate or overseas, so the person your parent trusts most to act calmly when capacity slips — or when the end comes — is a close friend, a neighbour, or a long-time accountant who’s said yes. The plan is to give that friend a clear, current map of what the property looks like, without handing over deeds or signing authority they don’t have.

The problem

Property is one of the slowest assets to administer in an Australian estate. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on wills and estate planning notes that an executor’s first task is to identify and value the deceased’s assets — and for property that means tracking down the certificate of title, the current insurer, the mortgagee if there is one, the managing agent if it’s tenanted, and the conveyancer who last handled a transfer. When the owner has slipped into cognitive decline before death, that information is often scattered across a solicitor’s filing cabinet, a Suncorp renewal letter in a drawer, and your parent’s increasingly unreliable memory.

For a carer, the harder problem comes earlier. If your parent loses capacity, the nominated friend or attorney needs the same information while your parent is still alive — to keep insurance current, pay the rates, talk to the strata manager, or instruct an agent if the home has to be sold to fund residential aged care. Without a single instruction set, the friend spends weeks calling round.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register. Working alongside your parent (or with their authority under an enduring power of attorney), you record what they own and where the evidence lives. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per property: the street address and lot/plan reference, the ownership structure (sole, joint tenants, tenants in common, or trust), the insurer and policy number, the mortgagee contact if any, the location of the certificate of title (e.g. with the solicitor at a named firm), the managing agent or strata manager, and the intended beneficiary preference. The vault does NOT hold the title deed itself, does NOT hold signing authority, and does NOT give the nominated friend any power they don’t already have under your parent’s will or power of attorney.

The boundary matters. The Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not a provider of legal or financial advice on what to buy, hold, or sell. It’s an instructions register. That’s what keeps it outside the AFSL regime under Corporations Act Part 7.6, and outside AUSTRAC’s reporting obligations — and it’s what lets your parent’s friend act quickly, on the right information, without inheriting risk they didn’t sign up for.

How it works

  1. You and your parent add each property to the vault — address, ownership structure, insurer, mortgagee, where the title is held, agent or strata contacts, and any beneficiary intent already reflected in the will.
  2. Your parent names the trusted friend as the recipient for the property module, and the friend accepts. The vault records that consent, which is how it stays compliant with the Australian Privacy Principles when personal information about a third party is stored.
  3. You set release rules: on confirmed loss of capacity (with a medical certificate), on death, or on a manual release your parent authorises now.
  4. When a release trigger is met, the friend is notified and sees only the property instructions module — not the will, not the bank details, not anything else unless your parent released it too.
  5. The friend uses the instructions to contact the insurer, the solicitor holding the title, and the managing agent directly. The vault accelerates the finding step. Probate, sale, or transfer still runs through the executor and the conveyancer.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth property portfolios often span more than one location — a Subiaco or Mount Lawley family home, a Mandurah or Margaret River weekender, a unit kept on as an investment. Each property typically sits with a different insurer, a different strata manager, and sometimes a different conveyancer. Landgate holds the title register, but the paper certificate (where one still exists) is usually with the solicitor or the mortgagee — and finding which one can take weeks if no one has asked recently. For a Perth carer whose parent’s trusted friend may be the closest local contact, a current instruction set is the difference between a clean handover and a scramble.

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 their aging parents in Perth can register their first property module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your parent’s trusted friend can find it — not title deeds, not signing authority, and not the property itself.