How Much Do Wrongful Death Cases Settled For

Average Wrongful Death Settlement Amounts

There’s no such thing as an average wrongful death settlement, and anyone who quotes you a number is skipping the part that actually matters: what made that case worth that much, or that little.

Value comes down to specifics. How old was the person who died, and what were they earning, or likely to earn over a career? Who depended on them financially, emotionally, day to day? What did the medical care and funeral cost? And separately from all of that: how strong is the evidence that someone else caused this, and how much insurance or money is actually available to pay a judgment? Two cases that may look similar on the surface, such as two fatal car crashes, can settle for wildly different amounts if one victim was a high-earning parent of three and the other wasn’t working.

State law also decides what survivors can even claim, so the same facts can produce a different number depending on where the death happened.

If you’ve lost someone and you’re trying to figure out where your case might land, that’s not something a settlement database or a headline verdict can answer. A wrongful death attorney can actually run the numbers for your situation.