Pet Care Instructions for Your Partner: A Melbourne Parent’s Plan for the Dog, the Kids, and a Bad Day

You’re a parent in Melbourne. You have kids, a partner, and a dog who knows exactly which side of the bed is hers. If you ended up in the Royal Melbourne for a week — or worse — your partner would be juggling the children, the school run, and a grieving household. The last thing they should be doing is ringing around vets to figure out which one holds the dog’s vaccination history, or guessing whether the cat’s thyroid medication is the morning dose or the evening one.

The problem

Pets are routinely surrendered to shelters after an owner’s death or hospitalisation — not because no one loved them, but because no one knew the plan. Who agreed to take them. What they eat. Which vet has the file. Whether there’s medication, and at what dose. In a two-parent household the assumption is usually “my partner knows” — but partners often only know half of it, because day-to-day pet care quietly concentrates in one person.

ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on estate planning is clear that a will deals with assets and guardianship, but the practical, daily instructions families actually need in a crisis sit outside the will entirely. Pets fall squarely in that gap. A will might bequeath the dog; it won’t tell your partner that the dog is on a grain-free diet, that the vet is in Brunswick, or that your sister already agreed to take her if both of you were gone.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register: you record what you have, where the relevant contacts are, and who you’ve nominated to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per pet: name, species and breed, date of birth, vet clinic and phone number, microchip number, dietary needs, medication and dosing schedule, behavioural notes, and the intended carer if neither parent is available — with that carer’s consent recorded in the vault. Your partner sees the pet module you’ve prepared for them, only when you’ve released it.

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 keeps the simplified version outside the AFSL regime and outside AUSTRAC reporting obligations — and it’s why it can be a straightforward subscription rather than a regulated product.

How it works

  1. You add each pet to your vault — name, vet, microchip, food, medication, routine, quirks.
  2. You name the intended backup carer (often a sibling, a close friend, or grandparents) and the vault records their consent. Your partner is named as the recipient for the pets module.
  3. You add the vet clinic’s after-hours number and a note about pet insurance if you have it.
  4. If something happens — hospitalisation, death, incapacity — your partner is notified per your release rules and sees the pets module immediately, without having to wait on probate or hunt through your phone.
  5. Your partner has the vet’s number, the carer’s number, and the medication schedule in one place. The animals stay in the family.

Why this matters in Melbourne

Melbourne households skew heavily towards pet ownership — dogs in the inner-north, cats across the suburbs, often with a rabbit or guinea pig added for the kids. The Lost Dogs’ Home in North Melbourne and RSPCA Victoria in Burwood East both intake animals surrendered after owner crises every week. Many of those surrenders happen because the surviving parent simply didn’t know there was a plan, or didn’t have the vet’s details, or couldn’t reach the family member who had quietly agreed years ago to take the dog. A clear instruction module — carer named and consenting, vet on file, daily needs written down — is the difference between your pet staying with your kids and your pet going to Cranbourne.

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Join the waitlist

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

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when parents in Melbourne can register their first pets module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what your partner needs to know — the vet, the carer, the medication, the routine — not your passwords and not your pet itself.