Estate planning notes and AI data leakage: what intergenerational advice gives away in ChatGPT or Claude.

Estate and aged care planning is where advice reaches across a family: a parent’s care needs, the children’s inheritance, the wills, and the disagreements about all three. The planning note that records it is the most sensitive document an adviser writes about people who are not the client. This page marks every item in a typical note that the Privacy Act and the Code of Ethics protect, and shows how the same note is drafted on Ermos inside the practice.

The estate and aged care planning note

Prepared when a client seeks advice about a parent’s aged care funding or their own estate, often before a lawyer is engaged.

Planning note: aged care and estate
Client: Lucy Harrington¹ · Subject: Patricia Nolan (mother), 74² · NR⁹ · 21 October 2026

Patricia’s position. Diagnosed with early-stage dementia in August; GP recommends residential care within twelve months. Owns her home at 18 Coral Crescent, Dee Why (approx. $1.18m), has $214,000 in term deposits and receives a part age pension (CRN 123 456 789A). Enduring power of attorney: Lucy. Enduring guardian: Lucy and her brother Mark jointly.³

Aged care funding. Options are to sell the home to pay a refundable accommodation deposit, or to keep it and pay a daily accommodation payment funded from the deposits and rent. Keeping the home preserves the asset for the estate. The aged care means assessment counts it from entry, capped at the First Asset Threshold, unless a protected person lives there (Mark’s status to be checked). The age pension assets test may exempt it for two years. Lucy prefers to sell; Mark wants to keep it because he has lived there rent-free since his divorce in 2024.⁴

The estate. Patricia’s will (2015) leaves the estate equally to Lucy and Mark. Lucy says her mother has told her she wants to change it to leave Mark the house and Lucy the cash, “to be fair since he has nowhere else”. Lucy is upset about this and asked whether her mother has capacity to change the will now. Advised that is a question for a lawyer and possibly a doctor, and that we cannot act on Patricia’s instructions as we act for Lucy.⁵

Centrelink and gifting. Patricia gave Mark $40,000 in 2025. The amount above the $10,000 yearly gifting free area is counted in the assets test and deemed in the income test for five years from the date of the gift. Lucy was unaware of the gift until last month.⁶

Lucy’s own estate. Lucy wants to update her will to remove Mark as guardian of her children. Tom disagrees; see review note. Referred to Carrick Doyle Lawyers.⁷

Actions. Model both aged care funding options. Suggest Lucy and Mark meet with us together, with Patricia if able. Flag conflict: we act for Lucy only, and Mark’s interests diverge.⁸

An invented note. The Centrelink reference is a placeholder. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the practice

The client

Named. The note is about her family. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Transmitted to the provider, generally offshore on personal plans
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The parent

A named 74-year-old who is not the client. Everything about her below is her personal information, held by a practice that does not act for her. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A non-client’s identity transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

Diagnosis, home, savings, pension and decision-makers

Health information about a woman with dementia, her complete financial position, her address, her Centrelink reference and who holds her powers. The most vulnerable person in the series, described in full. Patient data guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A dementia diagnosis, a home address and a Centrelink reference transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The funding options and the sibling dispute

Advice, and a family conflict over a house, including why the brother wants to keep it. Personal information about a third person, with his divorce. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A family dispute and a divorce transmitted; on consumer tiers it can train future models
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The will, a possible change, and a capacity question

What a woman with dementia may want to do with her estate, her daughter’s distress, and a question about her mental capacity. Nothing in the practice is more private, or more damaging if it surfaced in a dispute. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A capacity question about a woman with dementia transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

A gift and its Centrelink consequence

A family transfer, the brother’s receipt of it, and the daughter’s ignorance of it until recently. Financial information about two people and a family secret. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A family secret transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The client’s own will and a marital disagreement

That the client wants to remove her brother as guardian and her husband objects. A confidence, cross-referenced to another. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A marital disagreement transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The conflict flag

The practice’s own note that it acts for one sibling and the interests diverge. Standard 3 of the Code of Ethics on conflicts, applied in writing.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Your conflict assessment transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The adviser

Ties the note to a named adviser bound by the Code.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Transmitted, and the leak is traceable to you
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

What happens in Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)

The whole document is transmitted to the provider’s servers. On personal plans the user cannot choose where it is stored or processed, and for the major providers that has generally meant outside Australia, under that country’s legal process. Some business plans offer storage in Australia, but the provider still receives the content.
On consumer tiers, prompts can be retained and used to train future models.
The provider’s staff and systems can reach the content under the provider’s own policies.
Once sent, the practice no longer controls it. Retention and deletion happen on the provider’s terms.

The same document on Ermos

Ermos Dominion

The document is drafted on a unit in your office, from your own templates and the client file. Every marked item stays on the unit, which keeps working with the internet switched off. Nothing in it is transmitted to an AI provider, so there is no disclosure to analyse: the confidentiality work is the same as for your file server.

Ermos Edge

Your documents, the index and your access boundaries stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre. When a staff member asks for this draft, only their question and the excerpts they are permitted to see go to a named Australian provider, who is contractually barred from keeping the content or training any model on it. Nothing is processed outside Australia.

	Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Ermos Edge	Ermos Dominion
Where the document is processed	Provider servers, generally offshore on personal plans	Your instance in an Australian data centre; answers generated in Australia	The unit in your office
Who can read it	Provider staff and systems, under policy	Your staff, within the boundaries you set. The named Australian provider processes only permitted excerpts, under contract, and keeps nothing	Your staff only
Is it kept	On the provider’s terms	Kept on your instance; the provider is barred from retaining it	Stays on the unit
Can it train a model	On consumer tiers, yes	No, by contract	Only your own unit learns from it, on your hardware

Part of AI data leakage in financial advice practices. See how this works in practice: File notes on Ermos.

Common questions

Do ChatGPT and Claude use the information in an estate and aged care planning note?

Yes, a pasted planning note is sent to the AI company's servers and processed there. As at October 2026, whether a conversation on a personal plan (ChatGPT Free, Plus or Pro; Claude Free, Pro or Max) can be used to train the models depends on a setting each user controls. Business plans (ChatGPT Business and Enterprise, Claude Team and Enterprise) and the developer APIs sit under commercial terms, and OpenAI and Anthropic each say they do not train on that content by default (OpenAI, Anthropic). On either product, the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons can send a whole conversation back for training. It describes a mother's dementia diagnosis, her Centrelink reference and a question about her capacity to change her will.

Is it safe to paste an estate planning note into ChatGPT or Claude if the names are removed?

No, because the details describe one family even without names. Removing names rarely makes a document anonymous. Information stays personal information while the person is reasonably identifiable, and the OAIC warns that information can be at risk of re-identification even when it has been de-identified or anonymised. A woman in her seventies with early-stage dementia, a home in one suburb and a gift to one child would point to a single family. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recommends in its guidance on commercially available AI products that organisations do not enter personal information, and particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools, because of the significant and complex privacy risks.

Can ChatGPT or Claude remember the details in an estate planning note later?

They can. Both products also have memory features that can carry details from one conversation into later ones, and on a personal account each user decides whether they are switched on (ChatGPT, Claude). For this note, that could carry a mother's dementia diagnosis, her savings and the question about her capacity into later conversations about unrelated work. The woman described is not a client, because the practice acts for her daughter alone. If those details travel, the practice has no way to tell the family where they went.

How can an advice practice use AI for an estate and aged care planning note without sending it to ChatGPT or Claude?

Ermos is built so the document stays under your control. On the Dominion AI unit it is drafted inside your office and none of it is sent to an AI provider. On Ermos Edge your documents and index stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre, and only the question and the excerpts the user is permitted to see go to a named Australian provider that is contractually barred from keeping them or training any model on them. The adviser drafts the funding options and the meeting notes from the client file and the family's documents. Before the note goes on the file, the adviser checks every figure and statement.

Most of this note is about people who are not our clients. Do our obligations cover them?

The Privacy Act applies to personal information the practice holds, whoever it is about, and the parent's health information is sensitive information under it. The Code of Ethics' Standard 8 applies to client records, which this note is, and Standard 3 is why the conflict is recorded. None of that changes because the people described never signed an engagement letter.

Why is this the most sensitive document in the series?

Because it combines a vulnerable person's health and finances, a dispute between her children, a question about her capacity and a possible change to her will. In a later dispute over the estate, this note is the document every party would want, and the practice is the only party that should hold it.

How is intergenerational planning done on Ermos?

The modelling, the notes and the family's documents stay on the unit in your office, and the adviser drafts the options and the meeting notes from them. Nothing about the parent, the siblings or the will leaves the practice.

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