Arkansas Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under Arkansas law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What Arkansas law does to your claim
Four things in state law shape a wrongful death claim: how long you have to file, who the state's wrongful death statute says brings the action, the state's comparative fault rule, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
Arkansas bars recovery if plaintiff is 50% or more at fault.
Ark. Code Ann. § 16-64-122·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Ark. Const. art. 5, § 32; Bayer CropScience LP v. Schafer, 2011 Ark. 518·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Every action must be brought by and in the name of the personal representative of the deceased person; if there is no personal representative, the heirs at law bring it. The beneficiaries are the surviving spouse, children, father, mother, brothers and sisters of the deceased, and persons standing in loco parentis to the deceased or to whom the deceased stood in loco parentis. A.C.A. § 16-62-102(b), (d) reads: “(b) Every action shall be brought by and in the name of the personal representative of the deceased person. If there is no personal representative, then the action shall be brought by the heirs at law of the deceased person.” and “(d) The beneficiaries of the action created in this section are: (1) The surviving spouse, children, father, mother, brothers, and sisters of the deceased person; (2) Persons, regardless of age, standing in loco parentis to the deceased; and (3) Persons, regardless of age, to whom the deceased stood in loco parentis at any time during the life of the deceased.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of Arkansas wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here. The page states it is current through the First Extraordinary Session, 2026, including revisions made by the Bureau of Legislative Research under the direction of the Arkansas Code Revision Commission.
A.C.A. § 16-62-102(b), (d)·Last reviewed 2026-10-19
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
What partial fault costs you in Arkansas
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under Arkansas law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every Arkansas deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Arkansas periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
For Arkansas's 3 years, this page quotes the Arkansas Supreme Court in Marcum v. Hodge, 2023 Ark. 103, No. CV-21-521, decided June 15, 2023. That case was about a negligence claim from a car accident, brought against the estate of the other person involved, who had died. The opinion says “This case stems from an automobile accident involving Marcum and Hendricks that occurred on April 15, 2017.” In its own words, the court wrote: “Generally, tort claims are subject to a three-year statute of limitations which begins to run when a negligent act occurs. Grand Valley Ridge, LLC v. Metro. Nat’l Bank, 2012 Ark. 121, at 18, 388 S.W.3d 24, 35; see also Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105(1).” Applying that, it wrote: “The record demonstrates that the automobile accident from which Marcum’s negligence allegations against Hendricks arose occurred on April 15, 2017. Therefore, the three-year statute of limitations would have expired on April 15, 2020.” What the case decided was which period governs a claim against an estate: “we conclude that the statute of nonclaim, as opposed to the general three-year statute of limitations, governs Marcum’s claims against Hodge”. Its disposition reads “Reversed and remanded; court of appeals’ opinion vacated. KEMP, C.J., and HUDSON, J., dissent.” The text of Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105 itself was not read for this page. Ask a licensed Arkansas attorney which period applies to your claim.
Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorArk. Code Ann. § 16-114-203·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorArk. Code Ann. § 16-62-102(c)(1)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorArk. Code Ann. § 11-9-702(a)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorArk. Code Ann. § 16-56-105·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorArkansas against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 10 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply modified comparative negligence with a 50% bar, and Arkansas is one of them.
- Its 3 years to file is longer than the 2 years that 32 jurisdictions use. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 3 years.
- We have read the official text of 46 jurisdictions' wrongful death statutes. In 22 the personal representative brings the action, in 10 family members or the personal representative may, and the other 14 name a family member, a trustee or a representative, or name who benefits rather than who sues. Arkansas's is one of the 22 where the personal representative brings it.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data and Arkansas is not among them, so an estimate here is not held down by a ceiling we hold.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology
Arkansas calculators
Arkansas Wrongful Death questions
Every document behind our state injury law figures, each linked with the date we last read it, is listed on our State Injury Law research sources page.