Texas Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under Texas 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 Texas 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.
Texas bars recovery if plaintiff is 51% or more at fault.
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.001·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 74.301·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.008·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
The action is for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse, children and parents, any of whom may bring it for all. If none of them has begun it within three calendar months after the death, the executor or administrator brings it unless all of them ask that it not be brought. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.004 reads: “(a) An action to recover damages as provided by this subchapter is for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased. (b) The surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased may bring the action or one or more of those individuals may bring the action for the benefit of all. (c) If none of the individuals entitled to bring an action have begun the action within three calendar months after the death of the injured individual, his executor or administrator shall bring and prosecute the action unless requested not to by all those individuals.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of Texas wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here.
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.004·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 Texas
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 Texas 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 Texas deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Texas 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.
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorTex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 74.251·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorTex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(b)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorTex. Lab. Code 409.003·Last reviewed 2026-07-28
Open the workers compensation calculatorTex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorTex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the dog bite calculatorTexas 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 Texas 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. Texas's is one of the 7 where family members or the personal representative may.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data, and Texas is one of them at $250,000, 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
Texas calculators
Texas 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.