Wrongful Death Claims in Washington: Who Can File and What Families Can Recover

The days after a death are already full. Families are arranging a funeral, calling relatives, and opening mail from an insurer, and someone may have said there is a claim without explaining who is allowed to file it. Washington does not give every grieving relative a lawsuit in that person's own name. It creates specific claims, names who brings them, and names who they are for.

This article is general education about Washington statutes, not advice about your family. Our personal injury practice page describes how the firm approaches injury matters, and you can contact us when you want to talk through a particular death.

Two Different Claims Can Come Out of One Death

More than one claim can follow the same death, and they are not interchangeable.

• A wrongful death action under RCW 4.20.010 is for the economic and noneconomic damages the statutory beneficiaries sustained because the person died.
• A survival action under RCW 4.20.046 and RCW 4.20.060 continues the claim the person who died already had, including that person's own losses.
• RCW 4.24.010 lets a qualifying parent or legal guardian sue for the injury or death of a child. That parent or guardian is the plaintiff, not the personal representative.

The Personal Representative Brings the Wrongful Death Action

RCW 4.20.010 says that when a death is caused by the wrongful act, neglect, or default of another person, the decedent's personal representative may sue the person who caused the death. The suit is for the economic and noneconomic damages the beneficiaries in RCW 4.20.020 sustained because of the death, in amounts a judge or jury finds just under all the circumstances. A spouse, a child, or a parent does not file that action in their own name, even when they are the people collecting records and taking the calls. Survival claims use the same rule. They survive to the personal representative, and the personal representative brings them.

A personal representative is the person the court authorizes to act for the estate. When there is a will, RCW 11.28.010 provides that letters testamentary are granted to the named executor after the court admits the will and appoints the personal representative. If there is no will, the superior court still has to appoint someone before that person can file. Opening the estate is a probate step, separate from the injury case. The firm's probate, trust, and TEDRA page describes that work. The wrongful death section also applies whether or not the circumstances of the death amount, in law, to a felony.

Who Benefits: The Two Tiers After the 2019 Amendments

Who files and who receives the benefit are different questions. RCW 4.20.020 was amended by Laws of 2019, chapter 159. The legislature's note says the act is remedial and retroactive. It applies to claims that are not time barred, and to claims that were pending in any court on July 28, 2019. The same chapter rewrote the damages language in the survival statutes and in the statute for the death of a child.

First tier. The action is for the benefit of the spouse, the state registered domestic partner, and the children, including stepchildren. Anyone in that group who survives is a beneficiary. The statute does not list a former spouse. It does not list an unmarried partner who was not in a state registered domestic partnership. It does not limit the word child to a minor, and it names stepchildren in the text rather than leaving them out.

Second tier. If no spouse, no state registered domestic partner, and no such child survives, the action may be maintained for the parents or siblings. They are not added on top of someone in the first tier. The current text does not require those parents or siblings to have been financially dependent on the person who died. Families who remember an older dependency rule should use the statute as it reads after the 2019 amendment. Grandparents, grandchildren, other relatives, and friends are not named. Being a daily caregiver, or being named in a will, does not by itself put someone on this list.

A hypothetical, with no real family and no dollar figures: an adult dies leaving a spouse and a child. The action benefits the spouse and the child, including any stepchild, and not the parents. If no spouse, state registered domestic partner, or child survives, the action may be maintained for the parents or siblings.

How a Survival Action Is Different

A survival action continues a claim the person who died already had. It is not a second label for the family's own loss. RCW 4.20.046 says causes of action survive to the personal representative of the person who held them, and against the personal representative of the person who would have been liable, whether or not they would have survived at common law or before that section was enacted. Economic losses under that section are recovered on behalf of the estate. The only noneconomic damages are pain and suffering, anxiety, emotional distress, or humiliation personal to and suffered by the deceased, recovered on behalf of the RCW 4.20.020 beneficiaries, in an amount the trier of fact finds just. Those damages are available whether or not the injury caused the death.

RCW 4.20.060 is narrower. It covers a personal injury that itself occasions death. That action does not abate if a spouse, state registered domestic partner, or child, including a stepchild, survives. If none of them survive, it may be maintained for parents or siblings. The personal representative brings it in favor of the spouse or state registered domestic partner and any children, then the children alone if there is no spouse or state registered domestic partner, and then the parents or siblings. Besides the decedent's economic losses, those persons may recover the decedent's pain and suffering, anxiety, emotional distress, or humiliation. The relatives' own losses from the death stay with the wrongful death claim.

What Each Claim Can Recover

RCW 4.20.010 does not publish a checklist. It allows the economic and noneconomic damages the listed beneficiaries sustained because of the death, in an amount that is just under all the circumstances. The survival statutes are stricter. Their noneconomic list is only the decedent's own pain and suffering, anxiety, emotional distress, and humiliation. A beneficiary's loss of companionship is not on that list. When that loss is recoverable, it is as noneconomic damage under the wrongful death statute, or it is one of the losses RCW 4.24.010 names for a parent.

A second hypothetical, again with no real case and no amount. A person is hospitalized for several weeks after a crash and then dies of those injuries, leaving a spouse and no children. Medical bills from those weeks, and wages lost before death, are the kind of economic loss a survival claim associates with the decedent. The spouse's own financial losses after the death, and the spouse's own noneconomic losses from the death, are the kind of damages the wrongful death statute associates with the beneficiary. A death connected to work can also raise workers' compensation. RCW 4.20.030 says RCW 4.20.005, RCW 4.20.010, and RCW 4.20.020 do not repeal or supersede that act.

Claims for the Death of a Child

Parents are not limited to hoping they fall in the second wrongful death tier. RCW 4.24.010 lets a parent or legal guardian sue for the injury or death of a child. For a minor, that parent or guardian must have regularly contributed to the child's support. For an adult child, the parent or guardian must have had significant involvement: demonstrated emotional, psychological, or financial support in the parent-child relationship, at or reasonably near the death or the incident that caused it, whether the support was given to the child or received from the child. The action is available only if the child has no spouse, state registered domestic partner, or children. That condition does not turn on the child's age. If any of those people survive, this parent action is not available, and they are the first-tier beneficiaries of the wrongful death action instead.

The damages the section lists are the child's health care expenses, loss of services, loss of financial support, and other economic losses, together with loss of love and companionship, loss of the child's emotional support, and injury to or destruction of the parent-child relationship. The child's own pain and suffering is not on this list. Each parent recovers separately, regardless of marital status, even though there is only one cause of action. If one parent sues without naming the other, and parentage has been established, the other parent must be served with notice that meets the requirements for a summons and has twenty days to join. Failing to appear bars that parent from any share of the award.

How Comparative Fault Applies

Shared blame does not disappear because the case is about a death. RCW 4.22.005 applies to an action based on fault seeking damages for injury or death. Contributory fault chargeable to the claimant reduces the compensatory damages proportionately and does not bar recovery. The statute contains no percentage that ends the claim, and it does not spell out every question about whose conduct counts in a death case. How fault is divided, when each defendant pays only its own share, and the narrow rules that can bar a claim entirely are explained in Washington's pure comparative fault rule.

Claims Against the State or a Local Government

A lawsuit against a private person does not start with a government claim form. A lawsuit against the state or a local government does. RCW 4.92.090 makes the state liable for damages from its tortious conduct to the same extent as a private person or corporation. RCW 4.92.100 still requires the claim to be presented to the office of risk management first. Claims presented after July 26, 2009, use the standard tort claim form. Substantial compliance is enough, and the amount written on the form is not admissible at trial.

RCW 4.92.110 says no action may be filed until sixty calendar days after presentment. That wait tolls the limitations period. For limitations purposes, a suit filed within five court days afterward is deemed presented on the first day after the wait. RCW 4.96.010 and RCW 4.96.020 set the parallel rules for local governments, a group that includes counties, cities, towns, and public hospitals. The claim goes to the agent recorded with the county auditor, it must be presented within the limitations period, and filing on time is a condition precedent. The same sixty-day wait and tolling apply. Substantial compliance is enough, and an entity that has not complied with the section cannot raise a defense under it.

A hypothetical, only to mark when this step exists: a death is alleged to have been caused by a city vehicle, or by a state agency. The claim is presented, and sixty calendar days pass, before a lawsuit against that city or the state. The same death, alleged against a private driver alone, does not use these statutes.

The Filing Deadline

The wrongful death, survival, and child-death statutes do not state their own number of years. RCW 4.16.080(2) requires an action for injury to the person or rights of another, unless a different period is provided, to be commenced within three years. Three years is the window to plan around, not a date this article can calculate. The subsection does not say that every death claim begins on the day of death. A local-government claim still has to be presented inside the applicable period, and both government statutes toll that period during the sixty-day wait. If you are unsure the window is open, talk with a lawyer before you assume the claim is either safe or gone.

Practical Steps for Families

The legal pieces are easier to sort out when a few facts are written down early. These steps do not replace advice about your own deadline or your own beneficiaries. If the death followed a car crash, the duty to stop and the steps for keeping what happened at the scene are covered in What to do after a car accident in Washington.

If your family is sorting out who can file and what the claims can include, visit our personal injury practice page or contact us. Nelson Allen Walk & Scott, PLLC is located at 1103 Shaw Road, Puyallup, WA 98372, and can be reached at (253) 845-8895.

Written by Nathan D. Sukhia, Of Counsel.