Washington Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under Washington 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 Washington 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.
Washington uses pure comparative fault.
RCW 4.22.005·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
RCW 4.56.250; Sofie v. Fibreboard Corp., 112 Wn.2d 636 (1989)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
The personal representative brings the action for the economic and noneconomic damages of the beneficiaries: the spouse, state registered domestic partner and children, including stepchildren; if there are none, the parents or siblings. RCW 4.20.010(1), 4.20.020 reads: “his or her personal representative may maintain an action against the person causing the death for the economic and noneconomic damages sustained by the beneficiaries listed in RCW 4.20.020 as a result of the decedent's death,” and “Every action under RCW 4.20.010 shall be for the benefit of the spouse, state registered domestic partner, child or children, including stepchildren, of the person whose death shall have been so caused. If there is no spouse, state registered domestic partner, or such child or children, such action may be maintained for the benefit of the parents or siblings of the deceased.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of Washington wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here.
RCW 4.20.010(1), 4.20.020·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 Washington
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 Washington 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 Washington deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Washington 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.
RCW 4.16.080(2)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorRCW 4.16.350·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorRCW 51.28.050 generally requires a claim within 1 year of the injury. Occupational-disease claims run on a separate 2-year period under RCW 51.28.055, which this single figure cannot hold.
RCW 51.28.050·Last reviewed 2026-07-28
Open the workers compensation calculatorWashington 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 Washington 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. Washington's is one of the 20 where the personal representative brings it.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data and Washington 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
Washington calculators
Washington 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.