Wrongful Death Claims in New York After the Fourth Grieving Families Act Veto

Four separate attempts to change that have now failed. Understanding what the statute does and does not allow is the first step in evaluating a claim honestly.

Where the Grieving Families Act stands

The Grieving Families Act would have modernized New York's wrongful death law — permitting recovery for emotional loss including grief and loss of companionship, broadening the class of eligible claimants, and extending the filing period. It passed both chambers of the Legislature repeatedly, with bipartisan support.

Governor Hochul has vetoed it four times: in January 2023, December 2023, December 2024, and most recently on December 5, 2025. The vetoes cited concerns about insurance and healthcare costs and the breadth of the eligible-claimant class. The most recent version was S4423/A6063. As of this writing, no successor bill has been delivered for signature and the Act is not law.

Two claims, not one

A death caused by negligence generally produces two distinct causes of action, usually brought together:

Conscious pain and suffering

The survival claim is frequently the more substantial of the two, and it turns on evidence that the decedent was consciously aware of pain or of impending death, even briefly. Paramedic run sheets, emergency department records, bystander accounts, and Glasgow Coma Scale entries carry real weight. An instantaneous death without awareness supports little or no recovery on this claim — a result families find genuinely painful to hear.

Who can bring the claim

Only the personal representative of the decedent's estate may file, after being appointed by Surrogate's Court. The recovery is then distributed to the distributees — those who would inherit under New York's intestacy rules — in proportion to their pecuniary loss, not equally.

This excludes people who may have been closest to the decedent: unmarried partners, stepchildren who were never adopted, and long-term caregivers outside the intestacy structure. Broadening that class was one of the Grieving Families Act's central aims.

Where distributees are minors or interests conflict, court approval of any settlement and its allocation is required.

The deadlines

• Two years from the date of death for the wrongful death claim (EPTL § 5-4.1) — not three. Two exceptions worth knowing: September 11th-related deaths get two years and six months, and where a criminal action is pending against the defendant, the representative gets at least one year from the termination of that criminal action.
• Ninety days to serve a Notice of Claim if a municipality, public hospital, transit authority, or the State may be responsible. In wrongful death cases, that 90-day period runs from the appointment of the estate representative rather than the date of death.
• Two years and six months where the death arose from medical malpractice, though the wrongful death claim still runs on two years from death.
• Appointment of the personal representative takes time. Surrogate's Court proceedings can run weeks or months, and the limitations period does not wait. Families frequently lose claims to this gap alone.

How pecuniary loss is actually proven

"Pecuniary" is narrower than "financial." Building the number typically requires:

1. Earnings history and trajectory — tax returns, W-2s, employment records, and evidence of expected advancement, reduced to present value by a forensic economist.
2. Household services — a realistic accounting of childcare, eldercare, cooking, cleaning, repairs, and transportation the decedent provided, valued at replacement cost.
3. Parental nurture and guidance — for surviving minor children, the loss of intellectual, moral, and practical training a parent would have provided. Recognized New York law, and often underdeveloped in practice.
4. Lost inheritance — the accumulation the decedent would likely have left behind.
5. Funeral and burial expenses and medical costs incurred before death.

A decedent who was retired, a homemaker, or a child requires more careful work, not less — household services, guidance, and lost accumulation still carry real value, but they have to be documented rather than assumed.

What families should do early

1. Begin the Surrogate's Court appointment process promptly; nothing can be filed without it.
2. Preserve records — medical charts, autopsy and toxicology reports, police and agency reports, employment and tax records.
3. Identify every potentially responsible party, including public entities that trigger the 90-day rule.
4. Send preservation demands for surveillance, vehicle telematics, and electronic data before they are overwritten.
5. Decline recorded statements to any insurer before the estate has counsel.

Fatal motor vehicle collisions and construction site deaths are the two most common sources of these claims in New York City. Our attorneys handle both.