West Virginia Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under West Virginia 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 West Virginia 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.
West Virginia bars recovery if plaintiff is 51% or more at fault.
W. Va. Code §§ 55-7-13a, 55-7-13c·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
W. Va. Code § 55-7-29·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
The personal representative brings the action and recovers the damages, which the jury may direct to the surviving spouse and children, including adopted children and stepchildren, brothers, sisters, parents, and anyone financially dependent on the decedent or otherwise equitably entitled to share. If there are no such survivors, the damages pass under the will or, without one, the laws of descent. W. Va. Code § 55-7-6(a), (b) reads: “(a) Every such action shall be brought by and in the name of the personal representative of such deceased person who has been duly appointed in this state, or in any other state, territory or district of the United States, or in any foreign country, and the amount recovered in every such action shall be recovered by said personal representative and be distributed in accordance herewith.” and “may direct in what proportions the damages shall be distributed to the surviving spouse and children, including adopted children and stepchildren, brothers, sisters, parents and any persons who were financially dependent upon the decedent at the time of his or her death or would otherwise be equitably entitled to share in such distribution after making provision for those expenditures, if any, specified in subdivision (2), subsection (c) of this section. If there are no such survivors, then the damages shall be distributed in accordance with the decedent's will or, if there is no will, in accordance with the laws of descent and distribution as set forth in chapter forty-two of this code.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of West Virginia wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here.
W. Va. Code § 55-7-6(a), (b)·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 West Virginia
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 West Virginia 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 West Virginia deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the West Virginia 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.
W. Va. Code § 55-2-12(b)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorW. Va. Code § 55-7B-4·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorW. Va. Code § 55-7-6(d)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorW. Va. Code 23-4-15 generally requires the application within 6 months of the injury or death, with separate rules for occupational disease. Our filing-deadline field counts whole years, so it cannot state a 6-month window, and rounding it up would tell you that you have twice the time you actually do. Ask a West Virginia attorney or the Insurance Commissioner's office about your deadline.
Open the workers compensation calculatorW. Va. Code § 55-2-12(b)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorWest Virginia 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 West Virginia 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. West Virginia'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 West Virginia 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
West Virginia calculators
West Virginia 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.