How Courts Assess Marital Contributions When Wrongful Death Occurs: An Interface of Legal Issues and Family Theory in the Courtroom

This paper considers the narrow question of whether, in a wrongful death context, the right of survivors to recover damages should be based on gross family income and household production or be limited to the income and household production of a decedent. It focuses on the interface between forensic economics and the literature of family economics. It suggests that the family bargaining literature could address measurement questions that are important to forensic economics.