Pennsylvania Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania 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.
Pennsylvania bars recovery if plaintiff is 51% or more at fault.
42 Pa.C.S. § 7102(a)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Pa. Const. art. III, § 18·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Pa. Const. art. III, § 18·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
40 P.S. § 1303.505(d) (MCARE Act § 505)·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
The section leaves the procedure to general rules. The right of action exists only for the spouse, children or parents, and the recovery is divided as they would take under intestacy. If none of them is eligible, the personal representative may sue for medical, funeral and administration expenses. 42 Pa.C.S. § 8301(a), (b), (d) reads: “An action may be brought, under procedures prescribed by general rules, to recover damages for the death of an individual” and “the right of action created by this section shall exist only for the benefit of the spouse, children or parents of the deceased, whether or not citizens or residents of this Commonwealth or elsewhere. The damages recovered shall be distributed to the beneficiaries in the proportion they would take the personal estate of the decedent in the case of intestacy and without liability to creditors of the deceased person under the statutes of this Commonwealth.” and “If no person is eligible to recover damages under subsection (b), the personal representative of the deceased may bring an action to recover damages for reasonable hospital, nursing, medical, funeral expenses and expenses of administration necessitated by reason of injuries causing death.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of Pennsylvania wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here.
42 Pa.C.S. § 8301(a), (b), (d)·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 Pennsylvania
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 Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Pennsylvania 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.
42 Pa.C.S. § 5524(2)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculator42 Pa.C.S. § 5524(2)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculator42 Pa.C.S. § 5524(2)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorWorkers' Compensation Act § 315, 77 P.S. § 602·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculator42 Pa.C.S. § 5524(2)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorPennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania 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. Pennsylvania's is one of the other 10.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data and Pennsylvania 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
Pennsylvania calculators
Pennsylvania 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.