Survival Statute

What Does Survival Statute Mean?

A survival statute refers to a law that preserves an injured party’s right to file a lawsuit for personal damages before their passing against a negligent party. Additionally, if the injured party has filed a claim before their death, the statute allows their estate or legal representative to continue and pursue the action.

Insuranceopedia Explains Survival Statute

Survival statutes vary by state and typically allow the deceased party’s estate to claim damages incurred before their death. In other words, these statutes enable the estate to seek damages that the deceased could have pursued had they survived. Unlike a wrongful death action, which focuses on the economic impact of the death on the beneficiaries, a survival action addresses various damages the deceased suffered before death, such as emotional distress, medical expenses, and pain and suffering.

Because a survival action targets the at-fault party’s liability for pre-death damages, the size of the defendant’s insurance coverage often determines how much an estate actually collects, which is one reason it’s worth understanding how much liability insurance you need before a serious accident ever happens.

Since there is no standard or objective method for determining non-physical damages like emotional trauma and pain and suffering, insurance companies use various approaches to calculate an appropriate amount.

Survival statute payouts go to the deceased’s estate rather than directly to a named beneficiary, which is a different path than life insurance proceeds take. For readers sorting out how estate distributions interact with named payouts, our guide to life insurance beneficiary rules covers the common mistakes that send money to the wrong place.