States With Caps on Wrongful Death Damages

By the FigureMyTax Editorial Team · How we calculate

Delaware doesn't cap wrongful death damages overall — its only real limit is a narrow, specific cap on one cost category: funeral expenses.

No overall cap, one narrow exception

Under 10 Del. C. §3724, there's no general dollar ceiling on a Delaware wrongful death award. The one specific limit: reasonable funeral expenses are capped at $7,000 (or the amount designated elsewhere in the Delaware Code, whichever is greater), regardless of what a family actually spent.

Why a targeted sub-cap, rather than a broad one

Capping funeral expenses specifically, while leaving pecuniary loss and mental anguish uncapped, reflects a different kind of policy judgment than a broad damages cap. Funeral costs are a relatively predictable, bounded category of expense — unlike the open-ended question of what a family's loss of companionship or financial support is actually worth, which Delaware leaves to the jury without a statutory ceiling.

How other states handle it differently

Nationally, states take genuinely different approaches. Some fold wrongful death into the same noneconomic damages cap that applies to severe personal injury generally. Others set an entirely separate wrongful-death-specific cap. A handful of states prohibit capping either category by constitutional provision. Delaware's narrow funeral-expense-only limit is its own distinct approach within this landscape.

Fault, not a dollar cap, is the real limit

Without a general ceiling, the biggest practical constraint on a Delaware wrongful death recovery is the state's modified comparative negligence rule: if the decedent's fault exceeded 50%, the entire claim is barred, regardless of how large it would otherwise have been.

This is general information, not legal advice, and the state comparisons above are illustrative, not an exhaustive survey. Confirm the current rule in any state with a licensed attorney there.