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Wrongful death compensation and the unemployed

On Behalf of | Oct 22, 2019 | Wrongful Death |

Much of the time, wrongful death cases revolve around lost wages, lost earnings and lost support for a family.

For instance, a man dies a car accident while making $70,000 per year. His wife doesn’t work. He has three small children. They counted on that $70,000. He was the family’s main breadwinner. The case may also address issues like medical bills or pain and suffering, but the root of the whole thing will be attempting to gather compensation to replace that income that the family needs just to survive.

But what if the person who died was unemployed? What if they did not work and didn’t have a job?

The family can often still seek financial compensation. In this case, they will want to consider pecuniary losses, which focus on other ways that person contributed to the family as a whole — the things they have now lost.

The best example, perhaps, is that stay-at-home parent. They nurtured the children and gave them guidance. They offered them love and support. They gave them a happy, healthy home and the type of relationship that helps them grow up and thrive. And that’s not even mentioning things like childcare costs, which the stay-at-home parent eliminated through their own sacrifice of their time.

Naturally, these cases can get a bit more complicated since there are no paychecks and tax reports to give the person’s loss a strict financial value. That’s why it is important for the family members who have suffered such a loss to know about all of their legal options after the passing.

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