Pet Care Instructions for Your Adult Children: An Adelaide Plan So the Dog Doesn’t End Up at a Shelter

You live on your own in Adelaide. The kids are grown — one in the eastern suburbs, one in Melbourne, one who rings every Sunday. The dog is twelve, the cat is on thyroid medication, and if you went into the Royal Adelaide tomorrow none of your children could tell a vet which tablets the cat takes, or which of them you’d actually asked to step in. The plan is to fix that — quietly, in writing, before it matters.

The problem

When a solo adult has a health event or dies, pets are one of the first things that fall through the cracks. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on estate planning is blunt about the gap between what people intend and what the system actually delivers: a will deals with assets at death, but it doesn’t tell anyone, in the first 48 hours, who feeds the dog. Pets aren’t legally part of the estate in any urgent sense — they’re a living, eating, medicating responsibility that needs a human within hours, not after probate.

Your adult children don’t need a key to your house and a guess. They need to know: which animals live with you, what each one eats and when, which medications and at what dose, who your vet is and the clinic’s after-hours number, and — most importantly — which of them (or which friend) you actually asked to take the animals, and whether that person said yes. Without that, well-meaning families default to the local shelter because no one wants to make the wrong call in a crisis.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you record what you have, where it is, and who should know — and your named recipient sees only the module you’ve prepared for them, only when you’ve released it. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per animal: name, species and breed, age, dietary routine, current medications and dosages, vet clinic and phone number, microchip number, and the intended carer’s name with their recorded consent. It also stores any pet trust or bequest arrangements you’ve made with your solicitor.

The boundary matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not an advice service. It holds instructions about your animals — not your house keys, not your vet portal password, not the animals themselves. That’s what keeps it outside the AFSL regime under Corporations Act Part 7.6 and outside AUSTRAC reporting, and it’s also why the vault complies with the Australian Privacy Principles on personal information handling — including the consent step for the carer you’ve named.

How it works

  1. You add each pet to your vault — name, age, vet contact, food and feeding schedule, medications and dosing times.
  2. You name the intended carer (one of your adult children, or a nominated friend) and the vault records their consent. If the answer is “no”, you find that out now, not later.
  3. You name your adult children as the recipients for the pets module. They accept and the vault records their consent under the Privacy Act framework.
  4. If something happens, your children are notified per your release rules and see the pets module immediately — vet number, medication schedule, intended carer’s contact details — without waiting for any other part of your affairs to be sorted.
  5. Your children contact the intended carer and the vet directly. The animals are placed within hours, with the right medication schedule, by people who know what you wanted.

Why this matters in Adelaide

Adelaide is a city of older solo households and long-tenure pets — RSPCA South Australia and the Animal Welfare League both report intake spikes tied to owner hospitalisation and death, and most of those animals arrive without any care information attached. A solo adult in Norwood or Glenelg who has clearly recorded the cat’s thyroid dose, the dog’s vet at Prospect, and which daughter agreed to take them, takes that animal out of the shelter pipeline entirely. The instruction set is the difference between a phone call and a surrender form.

Sources

Join the waitlist

Join the waitlist — first access when the Digital Legacy Vault opens for Adelaide individuals

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when solo adults in Adelaide can register their first pets module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about who feeds the dog and which vet treats the cat — not your house keys, not your vet portal login, and not custody of the animals themselves.