What it means
Every potential beneficiary, including the estate, must be identified in the complaint. Damages then run by class. Each survivor: lost support and services, past and future, reduced to present value. The surviving spouse also recovers loss of companionship and protection and mental pain and suffering. Minor children — under 25 — and all children when no spouse survives, recover lost parental companionship, instruction, guidance, and mental pain and suffering. Each parent of a deceased minor child recovers mental pain and suffering; parents of an adult child only when there are no other survivors.
The estate itself recovers lost earnings from injury to death and, when a spouse or lineal descendant survives (or §768.21(6)(a)2. applies), lost net accumulations — plus medical and funeral expenses charged to it.
- Each survivor recovers lost support and services from the date of injury forward, reduced to present value.
- The surviving spouse adds loss of companionship and protection plus mental pain and suffering from the date of injury.
- Minor children (under 25) — and all children if no spouse survives — recover lost parental companionship and pain and suffering.
- The estate may recover lost earnings and, in defined cases, lost net accumulations; a survivor who paid medical or funeral bills recovers them.
- Estate awards stay subject to creditor claims properly filed under probate law (§768.21(7)).
- Medical-negligence carve-out: adult children and parents of adult children cannot recover the subsection (3) and (4) damages (§768.21(8)).
How it plays out
Allocation is where wrongful-death settlements get hard. The statute gives different survivors different damage baskets, so one settlement number must be split among people whose legal claims are not the same size — and the estate's share, unlike the survivors' shares, is exposed to creditors under subsection (7). We model the classes before mediation, because where the survivor-versus-estate line lands decides how much of the recovery creditors can ever reach.
Where this shows up
Pages on this site where § 768.21 does real work: