Superannuation Instructions for Your Sibling: A Perth Carer’s Plan for Your Aging Parent’s Super

You’re in Perth, helping an aging parent get their affairs in order, and the sibling you share that work with lives across town — or across the country. Between you and your parent, there are at least two super accounts, possibly a self-managed fund, and a binding death benefit nomination that nobody is sure is still current. The plan is to leave your sibling a clear instruction set: which funds exist, what the member numbers are, who the trustee contacts are, and what the nomination says — without anyone sharing a password.

The problem

When a parent loses capacity or dies, super is one of the most fragmented parts of the puzzle. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance for estate planning is explicit: super isn’t usually part of the estate, beneficiary nominations have to be valid at the date of death (binding nominations typically expire every three years), and trustees retain discretion when nominations are unclear or lapsed. Families regularly wait months for death benefits while a trustee assesses competing claims.

For a carer, the practical problem is worse: you may be the one who knows where the paperwork is, but your sibling is the one named in the will, or vice versa. If something happens to you before your parent’s affairs are resolved, your sibling inherits a search problem — which fund, which member number, which trustee phone number, which nomination, last refreshed when. The Privacy Act also restricts what a fund will tell a family member who can’t prove standing, so guessing your way through call centres rarely works.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you record what your parent owns, where to find it, and who you’ve nominated to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per super fund: the fund name, your parent’s member number, the binding death benefit nomination status and expiry date, the trustee’s contact number, and any notes about insurance attached to the fund. It does NOT hold passwords, MyGov codes, or any credential. Your sibling sees the inventory you’ve prepared for them, only when you’ve authorised release.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not an 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 reporting obligations — and it’s also why it can be a simple subscription rather than a regulated product.

How it works

  1. You add each of your parent’s super accounts to your vault — fund name, member number, current beneficiary nomination, trustee phone number, insurance notes.
  2. You name your sibling as the recipient for the superannuation module and they accept (the vault records their consent under Australian Privacy Principles).
  3. You record the date the binding nomination was last refreshed. The vault prompts you when the three-year clock is due to run out, so you can prompt your parent to renew it.
  4. If something happens — to your parent or to you — your sibling is notified per your release rules and sees only the superannuation instructions module, not your other modules unless you’ve released them too.
  5. Your sibling contacts each trustee directly with the member number and the relevant documentation. The trustee follows their own death benefit process. The vault accelerates the finding step, not the trustee’s decision.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth families often manage parental affairs at a distance — siblings spread between Perth, the South West, the eastern states, and overseas resource-sector postings. A WA-based carer who holds the paperwork in a filing cabinet in Mount Lawley or Joondalup is a single point of failure for a sibling in Karratha or Melbourne. Super trustees of the large industry and retail funds process death benefit claims in queue order and won’t release information to a sibling who can’t identify the member number. A clear instruction set — fund names, member numbers, trustee contacts, current nomination status — typically saves weeks of trustee back-and-forth and reduces the chance of a fund being missed entirely because nobody knew it existed.

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 super module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your sibling can find it — not your parent’s passwords, not their MyGov code, and not their money.