Losing a family member because of someone else’s negligence creates consequences that no lawsuit can undo. Families may be dealing with grief while also confronting funeral expenses, lost household income, unanswered questions about what happened, and insurance companies seeking information about the fatal accident.
At Robert Edens Law Office, we represent families throughout Lake County, McHenry County, Cook County, and surrounding Northern Illinois communities after fatal accidents and other wrongful deaths.
Our role is to investigate what caused the death, identify every potentially responsible person or company, preserve evidence, determine available insurance coverage, evaluate the damages available under Illinois law, and pursue the wrongful-death and related claims supported by the evidence.
Call us at (847) 395-2200 or contact us to discuss an Illinois wrongful-death claim.
The Illinois Wrongful Death Act allows an action when a person’s death is caused by a wrongful act, neglect, or default that would have allowed the injured person to maintain an action for damages if death had not occurred.
This means the underlying case still must be proven.
For example, after a fatal motor vehicle collision, we may need to establish that another driver was negligent and that the negligence caused the death. In a fatal premises-liability case, the evidence must establish the property-related duty and breach. A medical malpractice death requires proof of a departure from the applicable professional standard of care and causation.
The fact that an accident resulted in death does not automatically establish liability.
An Illinois wrongful-death action is brought in the name of the deceased person’s personal representative. The recovery is generally for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin.
The personal representative is usually an executor or administrator of the estate.
When the only estate asset is the wrongful-death cause of action and no petition for letters of office has been filed, Illinois law permits the court, under qualifying circumstances, to appoint a special administrator to prosecute or defend the wrongful-death action without opening a traditional estate solely for that purpose.
Determining the proper representative should occur early because the lawsuit must be filed by the legally appropriate party.
The Wrongful Death Act provides that the recovery is for the surviving spouse and next of kin.
This can include a spouse, children, parents, or other qualifying next of kin depending on the deceased person’s family circumstances.
It is inaccurate to assume that parents, siblings, or other next of kin can recover only when they were completely financially dependent on the person who died.
Dependency does matter, however, when the court allocates the recovery. Illinois law directs the court to distribute the proceeds among the surviving spouse and next of kin according to their respective degrees of dependency upon the deceased person.
Family structure can therefore become an important issue in both settlement and distribution.
Illinois permits fair and just compensation for the pecuniary injuries resulting from the death to the surviving spouse and next of kin. The statute expressly includes damages for grief, sorrow, and mental suffering.
Depending on the family relationship and evidence, wrongful-death damages may address losses such as financial support, household services, companionship, guidance, instruction, love, affection, and society, together with the grief, sorrow, and mental suffering resulting from the death.
The analysis should reflect the actual relationship rather than rely on a generic formula.
A parent who dies while raising young children presents different financial and relational losses from an adult child who regularly cared for aging parents or a spouse who contributed substantial household services.
One of the most significant components of many Illinois wrongful-death cases is loss of society.
The value of a family relationship cannot be calculated from a wage statement or medical bill.
The evidence may therefore address the nature of the relationship, time spent together, activities shared, communication, household roles, guidance provided to children, and the ways the deceased person participated in family life.
Illinois courts recognize that loss-of-society damages are inherently difficult to reduce to an exact mathematical value.
We develop evidence that explains who the deceased person was within the family rather than treating the case as nothing more than an economic calculation.
Illinois amended the Wrongful Death Act in 2023 to permit punitive damages when they would otherwise be legally available.
Punitive damages are not automatic in a wrongful-death case. They generally require conduct and circumstances supporting punitive liability under the underlying cause of action.
The statute also expressly excludes punitive damages in certain types of cases, including healing-art malpractice, legal malpractice, claims against the State or units of local government, and specified governmental employees acting in their official capacities.
Whether punitive damages can be pursued must therefore be evaluated separately from ordinary compensatory damages.
A wrongful-death claim and a Survival Act claim address different losses.
The Wrongful Death Act focuses on losses suffered by the surviving spouse and next of kin because the person died.
The Illinois Survival Act preserves qualifying causes of action that belonged to the deceased person before death. Illinois law expressly provides that actions to recover damages for personal injury, including punitive damages when otherwise applicable, can survive the injured person’s death.
Depending on the evidence, a survival claim may include damages associated with the period between the injury and death, such as conscious pain and suffering, medical expenses, or lost earnings that the deceased person could have pursued had they survived.
This distinction can be especially important when the person survived for hours, days, weeks, or longer after the initial injury.
Motor vehicle crashes are a significant source of wrongful-death claims.
We investigate fatal car accidents, commercial truck crashes, motorcycle accidents, pedestrian collisions, and bicycle accidents.
Evidence may include photographs, crash reports, witnesses, traffic-camera footage, surveillance, vehicle-event data, electronic communications, roadway evidence, toxicology results, and accident-reconstruction analysis.
Commercial truck crashes can involve additional evidence concerning driver qualifications, hours of service, electronic logging devices, inspections, maintenance, dispatch operations, and company safety practices.
A wrongful death may also result from negligent healthcare or long-term care.
Potential cases can involve delayed diagnosis, surgical errors, medication mistakes, untreated infection, falls, pressure injuries, inadequate supervision, dehydration, malnutrition, or other negligent acts or omissions when the medical evidence establishes causation.
Medical-malpractice wrongful-death claims are subject to specialized Illinois procedural and limitations rules. They should be investigated promptly because medical malpractice statutes can impose requirements and time restrictions different from an ordinary negligence action.
Our medical malpractice and nursing home injury pages provide additional information about those claims.
A fatal workplace accident can potentially create both an Illinois workers’ compensation death-benefit claim and a third-party wrongful-death claim.
Workers’ compensation may provide statutory survivor benefits when an employee dies because of a compensable workplace injury.
A separate wrongful-death action may also exist when someone other than the employer or another legally protected party caused the death. Examples can include a negligent motorist, equipment manufacturer, property owner, contractor, subcontractor, or another company at a jobsite.
The two claims provide different forms of recovery and must be coordinated because the workers’ compensation employer or carrier may have statutory reimbursement or lien rights.
Read our Illinois Workers’ Compensation Complete Claim Guide for more information about work-related claims.
Fatal accident investigations should begin as early as reasonably possible.
Depending on the case, we may need to obtain photographs, video, witness statements, electronic vehicle data, medical records, employment documents, business records, inspection records, maintenance histories, police materials, and expert analysis.
Preservation is particularly important because some evidence can disappear quickly.
Vehicles may be repaired or destroyed. Surveillance systems may overwrite video. Businesses may dispose of records according to routine retention schedules. Accident scenes change. Witness memories become less precise.
We identify what must be proven and work backward to determine which evidence may establish it.
Economic damages in a fatal-injury case may require analysis of the deceased person’s age, occupation, earnings, expected employment history, benefits, household contributions, and other financial circumstances.
A wage history alone does not necessarily provide the complete picture.
A person may have provided childcare, household maintenance, transportation, caregiving, financial management, or other valuable services that now must be replaced.
Cases involving substantial future earnings may require economic or vocational evidence to estimate losses over time.
Identifying all available insurance is particularly important after a fatal accident.
A motor vehicle case may involve liability coverage, commercial coverage, umbrella insurance, employer coverage, uninsured motorist coverage, or underinsured motorist coverage.
A business-related accident may involve several potentially responsible entities with separate insurance policies.
Insurance coverage does not determine legal damages, but the available policies and financially responsible defendants can significantly affect how compensation is ultimately collected.
We investigate both liability and potential sources of recovery rather than stopping after identifying the most obvious defendant.
The Illinois Wrongful Death Act generally requires the action to be commenced within two years after the person’s death.
There are important exceptions.
The Act provides a five-year period when death results from violent intentional conduct and, for specified homicide-related criminal charges, permits an action within one year after final disposition of the criminal case. That extension applies only against the individual responsible for the violent act or charged with the specified crime and does not automatically extend claims against other people or businesses.
A beneficiary who was younger than 18 when the cause of action accrued may also be subject to a separate statutory provision.
Other types of cases—including claims involving medical malpractice or governmental entities—can involve additional statutes that affect the filing deadline.
For that reason, no family should assume that every Illinois wrongful-death case can safely wait two years.
The deceased person’s comparative fault can affect a wrongful-death recovery.
Illinois law directs the fact finder to determine the decedent’s contributory fault under Illinois comparative-negligence principles. The recovery may then be reduced or barred accordingly.
The Wrongful Death Act also contains specific provisions addressing contributory fault attributable to individual beneficiaries. A beneficiary whose contributory fault is 50 percent or less may have that beneficiary’s share reduced proportionally; a beneficiary whose fault exceeds 50 percent may be barred from receiving that portion.
These situations are uncommon in many fatal-accident cases but can become important when a beneficiary was also involved in the event that caused the death.
The personal representative does not simply decide how to divide the settlement.
Illinois law requires the court to determine distribution among the surviving spouse and next of kin according to their respective degrees of dependency upon the person who died. The statute specifically directs the trial judge to conduct a hearing to determine each beneficiary’s degree of dependency.
A settlement involving minor beneficiaries can require additional court supervision.
Distribution issues should therefore be considered during settlement negotiations rather than addressed only after an agreement has already been reached.
The action is filed in the name of the deceased person’s personal representative. Under qualifying circumstances, a court can appoint a special administrator when the wrongful-death claim is the estate’s only asset.
The recovery is generally for the surviving spouse and next of kin. The court determines how the proceeds are distributed based on the beneficiaries’ respective degrees of dependency.
Qualifying children can be beneficiaries under the Wrongful Death Act. Their damages may include legally recognized pecuniary losses associated with the parent-child relationship, together with grief, sorrow, and mental suffering.
Potentially. Illinois wrongful-death law does not limit every parent’s claim to situations involving total financial dependency. The family structure, next-of-kin status, relationship, and statutory distribution rules must be evaluated.
Potentially, depending on who constitutes the deceased person’s next of kin under the circumstances. Eligibility and distribution should not be determined simply by asking whether the sibling was financially dependent.
Yes. The Wrongful Death Act expressly permits damages for grief, sorrow, and mental suffering suffered by the surviving spouse and next of kin.
Potentially. Since the 2023 amendment, punitive damages may be recovered when they are otherwise legally available, subject to statutory exclusions including healing-art malpractice and specified governmental claims.
Wrongful death compensates qualifying family beneficiaries for losses resulting from the death. A survival action preserves qualifying claims the deceased person possessed before death.
The general Wrongful Death Act period is two years after death, but important exceptions and other statutes can change the deadline.
Yes. A claim may settle when the parties agree on liability and compensation. A lawsuit may be necessary when responsibility, damages, insurance coverage, or settlement value remains disputed.
There is no reliable average value. The analysis depends on liability, the deceased person’s age and earnings, family relationships, household contributions, surviving beneficiaries, medical evidence, insurance coverage, comparative fault, and the circumstances of the death.
The family may have a workers’ compensation survivor claim and, when a legally responsible third party contributed to the accident, a separate wrongful-death action. The two claims should be evaluated together.
A wrongful-death case involves more than assigning a dollar amount to a family member’s life. It requires determining why the death occurred, who is legally responsible, what evidence can prove the case, which family members are beneficiaries, what losses Illinois law recognizes, and what sources of compensation are available.
At Robert Edens Law Office, we represent families throughout Antioch, Waukegan, Grayslake, Lake Zurich, Gurnee, Round Lake, Lake Villa, Libertyville, Woodstock, McHenry, Crystal Lake, Barrington, and surrounding Northern Illinois communities.
Call us at (847) 395-2200 or contact us to request a consultation about an Illinois wrongful-death claim.
For broader information about negligence claims, insurance, damages, and filing deadlines, visit our Illinois Personal Injury Lawyers page and our Illinois Personal Injury And Workers’ Compensation FAQs.
Every case depends on its individual facts and evidence. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome, and this page provides general legal information rather than legal advice concerning a particular death or family.
The Law Offices of Robert T. Edens, Personal Injury and Workers' Compensation Law Office, have offices in Antioch, Waukegan, Grayslake, Woodstock and Barrington. We represent clients throughout the communities of Antioch, Waukegan, Grayslake, Barrington, Woodstock, Buffalo Grove, Deer Park, Gurnee, Lake Zurich, Round Lake, McHenry, Cary, Crystal Lake, Libertyville, Lincolnshire, Mundelein, Vernon Hills, Wheeling, North Chicago, Zion, Inverness, Palatine, Wauconda, Island Lake, Fox Lake, Barrington Hills, Spring Grove, Lake Bluff, Lakemoor, Long Grove, Lake Villa, Kildeer, Wadsworth, Indian Creek, Fox River Grove, Lindenhurst and other cities within Lake and McHenry Counties Illinois.
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