Online Account Instructions for Your Adult Children: A Perth Plan So Nothing Gets Locked Forever

You live in Perth, you’re managing your own affairs, and your adult children live interstate or overseas. Your inbox, your photo library, your password manager, two social accounts, a cloud drive going back fifteen years, and a Qantas Frequent Flyer balance you keep meaning to use — all of it is sitting behind logins only you know. The plan is to leave your kids a clear list of which accounts exist and which provider holds each one, so they can follow each provider’s deceased-user process — without you ever sharing a password.

The problem

When an Australian dies or loses capacity, their online accounts don’t politely surface themselves. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on estate planning is clear that a will handles assets the executor knows about; it does not produce an inventory of accounts. Email, photo libraries, and social profiles routinely get locked forever because the family simply didn’t know the account existed — or knew it existed but couldn’t name the provider, the username, or the recovery email.

Provider processes vary widely. Some platforms have a deceased-user request form and accept a death certificate. Some require a court order. Some will release nothing, ever. None of those processes can start if your adult children don’t know which accounts to ask about. Sharing passwords is not the answer — it usually breaches the provider’s terms, and under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles, credentials are exactly the kind of personal information that shouldn’t be left lying around in a document file.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you record what you own, where to find it, and who you’ve nominated to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per online account: the provider name, your username or account identifier, whether a recovery contact or legacy contact is set up at the provider, and your closure preference (memorialise, delete, download and archive). It does NOT hold your password, your 2FA seed, your recovery codes, or your password manager master phrase. Your adult children see only 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 — and it’s also why it can be a simple subscription rather than a regulated product.

How it works

  1. You add each online account to your vault — provider, username or email identifier, recovery contact status, and your closure preference.
  2. You name your adult children (one or more) as recipients for the online accounts module and they accept; the vault records their consent under the Privacy Act.
  3. For each account, you note whether you’ve already set up the provider’s own legacy tooling (Google Inactive Account Manager, Apple Legacy Contact, Facebook Legacy Contact). The vault flags accounts where that hasn’t been done yet.
  4. If something happens, your children are notified per your release rules and see only the online accounts instructions module — not your other modules unless you’ve released those too.
  5. Your children contact each provider directly, following that provider’s deceased-user process, with the username and a death certificate. The vault accelerates the finding step; the provider still runs their own process.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth families are often geographically stretched — adult children in Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore, London. When a parent in Perth dies or loses capacity, the kids are doing recovery work remotely, on a time difference, without physical access to a laptop or a notebook of usernames. They can’t go through the desk drawer. An enumerated list of providers and usernames — prepared while you were well — is often the difference between recovering twenty years of photos and losing them. It also reduces the load on the executor, who otherwise spends weeks guessing at what accounts existed.

Sources

Join the waitlist

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

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when individual adults in Perth 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 2FA codes, and not your password manager master phrase.