Online Account Instructions for Your Adult Children: A Melbourne Plan So Your Email, Photos and Cloud Storage Aren’t Lost Forever

You’re on your own in Melbourne — single, divorced, or widowed — and your adult children live their own lives in Brunswick, Geelong, or interstate. Between Gmail, iCloud, Dropbox, a password manager, two photo libraries, a Facebook account you barely use, and the loyalty programs you actually do — there are probably thirty online accounts in your name. If something happens to you, your kids won’t know most of them exist. The plan is to leave them an inventory of what’s there and how to ask each provider for access — without ever handing over a password.

The problem

When an adult dies or loses capacity in Australia, online accounts become one of the hardest categories for families to recover. Every provider runs its own deceased-user or incapacity process — Google has Inactive Account Manager, Apple has Digital Legacy contacts, Facebook has memorialisation, Microsoft has its Next of Kin process, and many smaller providers have nothing at all. None of those processes work if your children don’t know the account exists in the first place.

ASIC MoneySmart’s estate planning guidance is clear that a will deals with assets in your estate, but most online accounts aren’t “assets” in that legal sense — they’re contracts with service providers, governed by each provider’s terms. Photos of grandchildren sit in an iCloud library no one can name. Twenty years of email correspondence sits behind a 2FA prompt no one can answer. Loyalty points expire. The Facebook account stays live forever because no one knew to memorialise it. None of this gets solved by the will.

Your adult children don’t need your passwords. They need to know: which providers you actually use, what email or username identifies each account, whether you’ve set up a legacy/recovery contact (and who), and what you’d like done with each account — memorialise, close, download and keep, or leave alone.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you record what exists, where to find it, and who you’ve named to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per online account: the provider, your username or account email, whether a legacy/recovery contact is configured and who that is, and your closure preference (memorialise, close, archive, leave). It does NOT hold passwords, recovery codes, 2FA seeds, or security question answers. Your adult children see 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 a credential store. 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 also what lets it stay a simple subscription rather than a regulated product. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your adult children can find it — not your passwords, not your 2FA codes, not your recovery phrases.

How it works

  1. You add each online account to your vault — provider, username or account email, the rough category (email, cloud storage, photos, social, password manager, loyalty, gaming), and a one-line note on what’s in it that matters.
  2. For each account that supports it, you configure the provider’s native legacy or recovery contact directly with the provider (Google’s Inactive Account Manager, Apple Digital Legacy, Facebook legacy contact, Microsoft Next of Kin). You then record in the vault whether that’s done.
  3. You record your closure preference per account — memorialise the Facebook profile, download and keep the iCloud photos, close the gaming account, leave the loyalty points to lapse.
  4. You name your adult children as recipients for the online accounts module and they accept (the vault records their consent under Privacy Act expectations).
  5. On a release event, your children are notified per your rules and see only the online accounts module. They contact each provider directly using the inventory and your preference notes. The vault accelerates the finding and intent steps — the provider still runs its own process.

Why this matters in Melbourne

Melbourne households over 50 tend to have layered digital histories — a Hotmail address from the late nineties that still receives bills, an iCloud library built up across three iPhones, a Google account tied to a small business ABN, a password manager nobody else has ever heard of. Adult children living interstate or overseas — common for Melbourne families — can’t easily dig through a parent’s paperwork or devices. A clear inventory, prepared in advance and held under Privacy Act-aligned consent rules, is often the only realistic way for those kids to recover the photos, close the dormant accounts, and stop the recurring charges.

Sources

Join the waitlist

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

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when individuals in Melbourne can register their first online accounts module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your adult children can find it — not your passwords, not your recovery codes, and not your 2FA seeds.