Missouri Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under Missouri 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 Missouri 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.
Missouri uses pure comparative fault.
Gustafson v. Benda, 661 S.W.2d 11 (Mo. 1983)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Mo. Rev. Stat. § 538.210.2(1)·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
Mo. Rev. Stat. § 510.265·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
The damages may be sued for by the spouse, the children or surviving descendants of deceased children, or a parent; if there is none of them, by a brother or sister or their descendants who can establish a right to the damages; and if there is none of those, by a plaintiff ad litem the court appoints. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 537.080.1 reads: “the person or party who, or the corporation which, would have been liable if death had not ensued shall be liable in an action for damages, notwithstanding the death of the person injured, which damages may be sued for:” and “(1) By the spouse or children or the surviving lineal descendants of any deceased children, natural or adopted, legitimate or illegitimate, or by the father or mother of the deceased, natural or adoptive;” and “(2) If there be no persons in class (1) entitled to bring the action, then by the brother or sister of the deceased, or their descendants, who can establish his or her right to those damages set out in section 537.090 because of the death;” and “(3) If there be no persons in class (1) or (2) entitled to bring the action, then by a plaintiff ad litem. Such plaintiff ad litem shall be appointed by the court having jurisdiction over the action for damages provided in this section upon application of some person entitled to share in the proceeds of such action.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of Missouri wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here. Read from the Internet Archive's capture of the official page as it stood on 2026-10-10; an amendment after that date would not show in it.
Mo. Rev. Stat. § 537.080.1·Last reviewed 2026-10-16
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 Missouri
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 Missouri 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 Missouri deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Missouri 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.
Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.120·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorMo. Rev. Stat. § 516.105·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorMo. Rev. Stat. § 537.100·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorMo. Rev. Stat. § 287.430·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorMo. Rev. Stat. § 516.120·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorMissouri 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.
- 11 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply the pure comparative negligence rule, and Missouri 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 37 jurisdictions' wrongful death statutes. In 20 the personal representative brings the action, in 7 family members or the personal representative may, and the other 10 name a family member, a trustee or a representative, or name who benefits rather than who sues. Missouri's is one of the other 10.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data, and Missouri is one of them at $481,493, so a large non-economic award can be reduced to it.
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
Missouri calculators
Missouri 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.