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

You’re caring for an aging parent in Perth. There isn’t much close family nearby — maybe a sibling interstate, maybe none — but there is a long-standing friend who has agreed to be the named contact if things change. Your parent has two or three super accounts collected over a working life, and nobody outside the household knows which fund holds what. The plan is to build a clear instruction set the friend can act on: which funds exist, what the member numbers are, whether the binding death benefit nomination is current, and which trustee to call — without ever handing over a password or a MyGov login.

The problem

Super is not part of the estate by default. ASIC’s MoneySmart estate-planning guidance is clear that super death benefits are paid by the trustee under super law, not under the will, and that binding death benefit nominations typically need to be refreshed every three years or they lapse. When a nomination is lapsed or unclear, the trustee uses discretion — and the family or friend waits, often for months, while the trustee works through competing claims and identity checks.

For a carer organising an aging parent’s affairs, two things compound that delay. First, capacity loss can happen before death — and once a parent can’t sign or confirm details, fund-by-fund detective work gets dramatically harder. Second, when the named recipient is a trusted friend rather than a spouse or child, the friend usually has no informal knowledge of the parent’s working history to draw on. They need a record, not a memory.

What the Asset Instruction Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an instruction register: you record what your parent owns, where to find it, and who you’ve named to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per super fund: the fund name, the member number, the current binding death benefit nomination status and expiry date, the trustee’s contact number, and any insurance attached to that fund. It does NOT hold your parent’s password, MyGov code, or any other credential. The trusted friend sees only the inventory you’ve prepared for them, and only when you’ve released it.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not a financial 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’s AML/CTF reporting obligations — and it’s why it can run as a simple subscription rather than a regulated product.

How it works

  1. You sit with your parent and add each super account to the vault — fund name, member number, current beneficiary nomination, trustee phone number, and any insurance attached.
  2. You name the trusted friend as the recipient for the superannuation module. The friend accepts and the vault records their consent — important because under the Australian Privacy Principles, the friend is a third party whose personal information (their name, contact details) is also being held.
  3. You record the date the binding nomination was last refreshed. The vault prompts you when the three-year clock approaches expiry, so you can ask your parent to renew it while they still have capacity.
  4. If something happens — death or a release trigger you’ve defined — the friend is notified per your release rules and sees only the superannuation module, not your parent’s other modules unless you’ve released those too.
  5. The friend contacts each trustee directly with the member number and a death certificate. The trustee runs their own death benefit process. The vault accelerates the finding step; it does not override the trustee’s decision.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth households often hold super accumulated across mining, construction, healthcare, and public-sector work — sectors with high employer turnover and a long history of default fund changes. An aging parent in Perth may have three or four small balances scattered across industry and retail funds, some with insurance still attached and some without. When the named recipient is a trusted friend rather than immediate family, the time cost of fund-by-fund discovery falls on someone who has no payroll history to work from. A clear instruction set — what exists, where, who to call — typically saves weeks of trustee back-and-forth and reduces the chance that a small fund is simply missed.

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 aging parents in Perth can register their first super module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your parent’s trusted friend can find it — not passwords, not MyGov codes, and not the money itself.