Section 8 estate claim

Section 8 of the Civil Law Act 1956 preserves a deceased person’s own cause of action for the benefit of their estate, so a fatal accident does not automatically end the right to claim.

The estate can generally recover items like pain and suffering before death, medical expenses and funeral costs, but it cannot recover loss of earnings for the period after death, since that loss belongs to the separate dependency claim instead.^[1] Read more in the estate claim.

Families are sometimes surprised that an estate claim and a dependency claim exist side by side, each covering a different kind of loss.

Because the two claims can run at the same time, families are often advised to pursue both rather than assuming only one applies to their situation.