Illinois Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under Illinois 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 Illinois 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.
Illinois bars recovery if plaintiff is 51% or more at fault.
735 ILCS 5/2-1116·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
735 ILCS 5/2-1706.5; Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, 237 Ill. 2d 217 (2010)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
The action is brought by and in the names of the personal representatives of the person who died, and, except as the section provides otherwise, the amount recovered is for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin. 740 ILCS 180/2(a) reads: “(a) Every such action shall be brought by and in the names of the personal representatives of such deceased person, and, except as otherwise hereinafter provided, the amount recovered in every such action shall be for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin of such deceased person.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of Illinois wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here.
740 ILCS 180/2(a)·Last reviewed 2026-10-17
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 Illinois
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 Illinois 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 Illinois deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Illinois 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.
735 ILCS 5/13-202·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculator735 ILCS 5/13-212·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculator820 ILCS 305/6(d)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorIllinois 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.
- 24 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar, and Illinois is one of them.
- Its 2 years to file is the same as the most common deadline in the country, which 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 40 jurisdictions' wrongful death statutes. In 21 the personal representative brings the action, in 7 family members or the personal representative may, and the other 12 name a family member, a trustee or a representative, or name who benefits rather than who sues. Illinois's is one of the 21 where the personal representative brings it.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data and Illinois 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
Illinois calculators
Illinois 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.