Superannuation Instructions for Your Parent’s Executor: A Perth Carer’s Plan for the Estate’s First Month

You’re the one who drives your mum to appointments in Perth, sits in on the GP visits, and keeps the spreadsheet of her finances. Somewhere in her paperwork are two or three super accounts — the long career one, the casual job she did in her sixties, maybe a pension product the bank set up. When she dies, it won’t be you who deals with the trustees. It’ll be the executor named in her will (perhaps you, perhaps your sibling, perhaps a solicitor). The plan is to leave the executor a clean list of what super exists, who to call, and what nominations are on file — without any login details changing hands.

The problem

Most older Australians hold more than one super account, and many hold insurance attached to one of those accounts that the family doesn’t know about. ASIC’s MoneySmart estate planning guidance is clear that super is generally paid by the trustee under super law, not through the will — but the executor still has to identify every fund, contact every trustee, and supply death certificates and proof of authority for each one. Where binding death benefit nominations have lapsed (they typically expire every three years) or where the nomination conflicts with the will, trustees exercise their own discretion and the process can stretch for months.

If your parent loses capacity before they die, the problem compounds. The executor’s authority only begins at death. In the gap between capacity loss and death, no one has a current map of which super accounts exist or whether the nominations are still valid — unless someone, while your parent was still well, wrote it down.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register built for Australian individuals and families. The simplified version records, for each of your parent’s super accounts: the fund name, the member number, the current binding death benefit nomination and its expiry date, the trustee’s contact number, and a note on any insurance attached. It does NOT hold login credentials, MyGov codes, or any password. The executor named in the will sees only the superannuation instructions module, only when release is authorised under your parent’s release rules.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not financial advice. It’s an instructions register — what exists, where it lives, who to contact. That is what keeps the vault outside the AFSL regime in Corporations Act Part 7.6 and outside AUSTRAC’s reporting obligations. It’s also what lets the vault stay a straightforward subscription rather than a regulated product. Personal information in the vault — your parent’s, the executor’s, the trustees’ contact details — is handled under the Australian Privacy Principles set out in the Privacy Act 1988.

How it works

  1. You sit with your parent (or work from their paperwork with their consent) and add each super account to the vault — fund name, member number, current nomination, trustee phone number, any attached insurance.
  2. Your parent names the executor as the recipient for the superannuation module. The executor accepts and the vault records that consent.
  3. The vault tracks the three-year clock on each binding nomination and prompts your parent to refresh before expiry.
  4. On death, release is triggered per your parent’s rules. The executor is notified and sees the superannuation module — not the other modules unless they were also released to them.
  5. The executor contacts each trustee directly, with the member number in hand, and works through each trustee’s death benefit process. The vault accelerates discovery; the trustee still makes the decision.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth working lives often include long stints in mining, construction, healthcare, or the public sector — sectors with strong industry super funds and frequently with significant insurance attached to the super. Carers in Perth routinely discover, after a parent dies, a default insurance policy inside an old super account no one had thought about for fifteen years. Leaving the executor a current, written inventory means the estate doesn’t lose a policy because no one knew to claim it, and the trustees aren’t kept waiting weeks for the executor to track down member numbers.

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