Executor information

If you are visiting this page because you are managing the estate of someone close to you, we appreciate that this can be a stressful time, and hope you will find answers here to any questions you may have.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us; we are here to help, and we are grateful to you for honouring the wishes of the kind and thoughtful person who remembered St Christopher’s in their Will.

If you have never been an executor to a Will before, we appreciate that it can feel daunting, especially at what can be an emotional and stressful time. However, there is plenty of advice to help you get started, and to guide you step by step as you manage the estate.

You might like to start by visiting the Citizen’s Advice website on dealing with the financial affairs of someone who has died.

You may find the Wills and Probate Checklist offered by the Public Records Office helpful.

As you are dealing with a gift that has been left to a charity, you may find it helpful to visit the Institute of Legacy Management, which offers a guide and a document checklist for lay executors.

If you wish to confirm that we are indeed the charity named in the Will, you may find it helpful to visit our entry on the Charity Commission’s Register of Charities: ST CHRISTOPHERS HOSPICE – 210667

Email us at: legacies@stchristophers.org.uk
Call us on: 020 8768 4575

We invite you to tell us as soon as you can that a gift has been left to us, because this gives us a chance to thank you for taking on the role of executor, and to ask you to share our thanks, as appropriate, with other friends and family.

This will also give us the chance to update our records and remove the deceased’s name from our mailing lists, to avoid causing distress to those who are dealing with post.

We realise it can take some time to get all the estate affairs in order and some estates can be complex to deal with. Therefore, you may wish to instruct a solicitor specialising in probate/estate administration to deal with matters on your behalf.

We will be pleased to hear from you as matters progress; for example, it will be helpful to know when the Grant of Probate has been issued.

When you are ready to make the payment of this remarkable gift to us, you will need the following details:

(1) Payment by bank transfer:
Account name: St Christopher’s Hospice Ltd
Account number: 30724556
Sort code: 40-02-07
Bank: HSBC
Reference: please include “LG_surname” so that we can quickly identify the legacy gift.

Please inform us when the payment is being made so that we can look out for its arrival, and please let us have your contact details so that we can confirm safe receipt and discharge of our legacy under the Will for your executor records.
Please email us at: legacies@stchristophers.org.uk
Or call us on: 020-8768 4575

(2) Payment by cheque:
Payee: St Christopher’s Hospice Ltd
Postal address: 51-59 Lawrie Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 6DZ

Please include a note of the name of the person who has left us the gift in their Will, and your contact details so that we can confirm safe receipt and discharge of our legacy under the Will for your executor records.

How should I handle a pecuniary gift (a cash amount) to St Christopher’s?

We ask you to send us a copy of the Will clause that relates to the gift to St Christopher’s once probate has been granted, or when you are ready to make payment of the gift. We ask you for the Will clause that mentions us so that we can show our auditors where our entitlement to these funds comes from, and also so that we can ensure we honour the wishes expressed in the Will about how we should make use of the gift.

When you are ready to make the gift, please see the section above on how to make payment of a legacy gift.

When you begin the estate administration, we ask that you send us a full copy of the Will and a Schedule of the Assets and Liabilities. There may be areas of administration that we can help with, so please don’t hesitate to contact us at the outset and keep in touch with us as the estate administration progresses.

If more than one charity has been remembered in the Will, it is quite usual for the charities to work together so that you don’t have to contact each charity individually at every step, and we can keep correspondence and any questions to a minimum for you.

When you are ready to make the gift, we ask that you send us a copy of the executor’s statement of account. This is an account that allows the executor(s) to show all transactions that have occurred in the administration of the estate, and the amount payable to the charity.

Please see the section above on how to make the payment of this special legacy gift.

Please contact us to tell us the nature of the specific gift left to us. Please provide us with a copy of the Will clause that confirms our entitlement and any directions on how we should use the gift. We also ask for a copy of the valuation of the item that has been undertaken for probate purposes.

In most circumstances, we will ask that you oversee the sale of the item on our behalf, but please do contact us first, because this may depend on the Will clause wording

Get in touch

Our legacies team will be happy to answer your questions. Please email legacies@stchristophers.org.uk or telephone 020 8768 4575.

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