North Dakota Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under North Dakota 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 North Dakota 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.
North Dakota bars recovery if plaintiff is 50% or more at fault.
N.D.C.C. § 32-03.2-02·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
The action is brought, in this order, by the surviving spouse, the surviving children, a surviving parent, a surviving grandparent, the personal representative, or a person who had primary physical custody of the decedent, and a person next in order may sue if the one entitled does not within 30 days after demand. The recovery goes to the heirs at law in shares the judge fixes. N.D. Cent. Code §§ 32-21-03, 32-21-04 reads: “The action shall be brought by the following persons in the order named: 1. The surviving husband or wife, if any. 2. The surviving children, if any. 3. The surviving mother or father. 4. A surviving grandparent. 5. The personal representative. 6. A person who has had primary physical custody of the decedent before the wrongful act. If any person entitled to bring the action refuses or neglects so to do for a period of thirty days after demand of the person next in order, that person may bring the action.” and “The amount recovered shall not be liable for the debts of the decedent, but shall inure to the exclusive benefit of the decedent's heirs at law in such shares as the judge before whom the case is tried shall fix in the order for judgment,” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of North Dakota wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here.
N.D. Cent. Code §§ 32-21-03, 32-21-04·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 North Dakota
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 North Dakota 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 North Dakota deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the North Dakota 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.
N.D.C.C. § 28-01-16(5)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorN.D.C.C. § 28-01-18(3)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorN.D.C.C. § 28-01-18(4)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorN.D.C.C. 65-05-01·Last reviewed 2026-07-28
Open the workers compensation calculatorN.D.C.C. § 28-01-16(5)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorNorth Dakota 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 North Dakota 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 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. North Dakota's is one of the other 10.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data, and North Dakota is one of them at $500,000, 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
North Dakota calculators
North Dakota 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.