Property Instructions for Your Partner: A Perth Parent’s Plan for the Family Home (and Anything Else With a Title)

You’re raising kids in Perth, you co-own a house with your partner, and there’s probably one more property somewhere in the picture — a rental in Joondalup, a holiday block down south, or a share in the family farm in the Wheatbelt. If something happens to you tomorrow, your partner shouldn’t have to ring three accountants and a solicitor to work out what’s owned, how it’s owned, and who insures it. They should be able to open one set of instructions and see the whole property picture you’ve left them.

The problem

Property is the slowest part of an Australian estate to administer. ASIC’s MoneySmart estate planning guidance is plain about this: while a will sets out who inherits, the executor still has to identify each asset, locate the title and mortgage documents, contact the insurer and mortgagee, and prove ownership before anything can be transferred or sold. When ownership is split across joint tenancies, a family trust, and a sole name, and the documents live across a conveyancer’s filing cabinet, an accountant’s portal, and a fireproof box at home, the executor’s first job is detective work.

Your partner already has enough to manage — children, work, grief, the funeral. What they don’t need is to spend the first month reconstructing your property holdings from bank statements and council rates notices. They need a single instruction set: every address, how it’s owned, who holds the title, who insures it, who’s on the mortgage, and who the conveyancer or property manager is.

What the Asset Instruction Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register. You record what you own, where the relevant documents live, and who you’ve named to receive the instructions. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per property: the address, the ownership structure (sole, joint tenants, tenants in common, trust), where the certificate of title is held, the mortgagee’s name and contact, the insurer and policy number, your conveyancer or solicitor’s details, and any tenant or property manager contacts.

The vault does NOT hold the certificate of title itself, the deeds, scanned mortgage documents, or any banking credential. It tells your partner where those things live and who to contact. That distinction matters: the Digital Legacy Vault is not a financial product, not a custody service, and not financial advice. It’s an instructions register. That’s what keeps it outside the AFSL regime (Corporations Act Part 7.6) and outside AUSTRAC reporting — and it’s why it can be a simple subscription rather than a regulated product. Personal information stored in the vault is handled under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles.

How it works

  1. You add each property to your vault — address, ownership structure, mortgagee, insurer, where the title is held, and the conveyancer or solicitor who handled the purchase.
  2. You name your partner as the recipient for the property module, and they accept (the vault records their consent).
  3. You add notes the executor will need: which property is the family home, which is investment, who manages the tenants, whether any property sits inside a family trust, and your preferences for what should happen (kept for the children, sold, transferred).
  4. If something happens, your partner is notified per your release rules and sees only the property module — not your other modules unless you’ve released them.
  5. Your partner takes the instruction set to the executor and solicitor. The vault accelerates the reconstruction step. The legal transfer still runs through Landgate and the executor’s solicitor, as it always does.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth families often carry a property mix that confuses estate administration: a primary home in the metro area, an investment property bought during a mining boom, sometimes a holiday property in the South West or an inherited share of a rural block. Ownership is frequently split between spouses, a family trust set up for tax purposes, and occasionally a self-managed super fund. Each structure has a different transfer pathway and a different document trail. A clear instruction set — one address per line, ownership structure named, mortgagee and insurer attached — typically saves a Perth executor weeks of paperwork and reduces the risk of an asset being overlooked, which is the failure mode parents of dependants worry about most.

Sources

Join the waitlist

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

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when Perth parents can register their first property module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your partner can find it — not your title deeds, not your mortgage documents, and not your bank logins.