States With Caps on Wrongful Death Damages

By the FigureMyTax Editorial Team · How we calculate

Illinois had a dollar cap on wrongful death damages decades ago. That cap is long gone, and what replaced it is a notably broad, grief-inclusive, no-cap approach.

A $30,000 ceiling that's history

A 1967 amendment to the Illinois Wrongful Death Act set a limit of $30,000, up from an earlier $20,000 ceiling. That cap was subsequently removed, and no dollar limit applies to wrongful death recoveries in Illinois today — a conclusion reinforced by Best v. Taylor Machine Works (1997), which struck down a general noneconomic damages cap that explicitly covered wrongful death alongside property damage and personal injury.

Grief and sorrow, explicitly recoverable

Compared to some states that limit wrongful death damages to pecuniary or financial losses, Illinois's statute explicitly includes grief, sorrow, and mental suffering as a recoverable category for the surviving spouse and next of kin — a notably broader approach than many jurisdictions take.

How other states compare

Nationally, states take genuinely different approaches to wrongful death damages. Some fold it 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, Illinois among them, impose no dollar cap on either category.

A distinctive fault-allocation structure

Even among uncapped states, Illinois's per-beneficiary fault rule stands out — one beneficiary's own contributory fault reduces only their individual share, leaving other beneficiaries' recoveries fully intact. Most other uncapped states don't build this kind of individualized allocation directly into their wrongful death statute.

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