Grief does not come with a legal roadmap, and the first question families ask is usually the right one: who is actually allowed to bring this case? California answers by statute, precisely, and the answer surprises families constantly, in both directions. This page walks the list in plain English: spouses, children, heirs, the putative spouse, and the dependents the statute protects. The Vertanous Firm has recovered more than $60 Million for injured Californians and grieving families, including two $2.0 Million wrongful death recoveries.
The Short Answer
Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60 names who holds a California wrongful death claim. Being family is not the test. Being loved is not the test. The test is the statute's list, and everything on this page comes from walking that list carefully. It is part of our complete guide: Pasadena wrongful death lawyer.
Why so rigid? Because one death could otherwise produce a dozen lawsuits from a dozen relatives, and because the recovery is meant for the people the law recognizes as bearing the loss. The rigidity cuts both ways: some people families expect to have a claim do not, and some people families never considered do. Both surprises are better discovered in our office at the start than in a courtroom at the end.
The First Tier
The core of the statute is the immediate family:
When people in this tier exist, they hold the claim together, and the case belongs to them as a group. What each person's share of a recovery looks like depends on their own relationship and their own loss, which is a separate question from who may sue, and one we walk through with every family member individually.
The Second Tier
If the decedent left no surviving spouse, domestic partner, or issue, section 377.60 hands the claim to the people who would inherit from the decedent under California's intestate succession rules, the rules that govern when someone dies without a will. In practice, that most often means the decedent's parents, and it is the door through which the parents of an unmarried, childless adult child bring their case.
This tier is where family trees start to matter in ways nobody anticipates. Estranged relatives can hold claims. Half-siblings can enter the analysis. The order of deaths within a family can change who inherits. None of this is a reason for despair; it is a reason for care. We map the family tree against the succession rules at the beginning, in writing, so the case is filed once and filed right.
Example: Daniel, thirty-four, unmarried with no children, is killed by a negligent driver. His mother survives him. His father died years earlier, and he was close to a stepbrother who is not related to him by blood or adoption.
Conclusion: With no spouse, partner, or issue, the claim passes to those who would inherit from Daniel, and on these facts that is his mother. The stepbrother's grief is real, but under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60 he holds no claim on these facts, and no amount of closeness changes the statutory answer. The case is his mother's to bring.
The Putative Spouse
Some people learn two devastating facts in the same season: their spouse is gone, and the marriage they lived in was never legally valid. A ceremony abroad that was never properly registered. A prior marriage that was never actually dissolved before the new one began. Paperwork that failed in ways nobody caught while everyone was alive.
California law refuses to make that person a stranger to the loss. Section 377.60 recognizes the putative spouse: a surviving partner whose marriage was void or voidable, but who believed in good faith that the marriage was valid. A putative spouse who was dependent on the decedent may bring the wrongful death claim, and the statute extends similar protection to the putative spouse's children. The heart of the doctrine is the good-faith belief, and the proof is the life itself: the ceremony, the years together, the joint accounts, the home, the way the couple held themselves out to the world.
Example: Sara married her husband in a religious ceremony eighteen years before his death and believed, always, that they were legally married. After he is killed in a crash, the family learns his divorce from a first marriage decades earlier was never finalized, which made the marriage to Sara legally void. She depended on his income entirely.
Conclusion: Sara has the profile of a putative spouse: a void marriage she believed in good faith was valid, plus financial dependence. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60 she may hold the wrongful death claim despite the defect in the marriage, and her belief, lived out over eighteen years, is exactly what the doctrine exists to honor. A defense lawyer will test her good faith; the record of her life answers.
If any version of this story resembles yours, do not let anyone, including a well-meaning relative, tell you that you have no case before a lawyer has looked. This corner of the law exists precisely for you.
The Dependents
The statute's last protections follow the money that held a household together, because dependence is a loss the law can see:
Dependence is proven, not assumed: bank records, rent and bills, school records, and the testimony of the people who watched the household run. In blended families, and most families are blended somewhere, these provisions are often the difference between a child the law protects and a child the defense pretends not to see.
Not sure whether you hold a claim? That is a statute question, and we answer it at the first call, for free.
Speak With UsOne Case, Everyone In
California expects the wrongful death claim to proceed as a single action that includes every person who holds it. One case, all heirs, resolved together. The rule protects defendants from paying twice, and it protects families from watching relatives race each other to the courthouse.
For your family, the rule has one practical consequence: the heirs must be identified early, completely, and accurately. A missing heir can surface later with rights that complicate everything, and a defense lawyer who finds the gap first will use it. This is why our intake in a wrongful death case looks almost genealogical: we map every marriage, every child, every dependent, and every succession question under section 377.60 before anything is filed. Families sometimes disagree, and relatives sometimes cannot be found; there are procedures for both, and we handle them without adding to the family's burden.
The claim itself then runs on the ordinary wrongful death rules: what the case compensates, how fault is fought, and the deadlines that do not pause for grief, all covered on our wrongful death page. Two of those deadlines are worth repeating anywhere: the general two-year limit, and the six-month government claim that applies when a public entity may share responsibility, explained step by step on our government claim deadline page. And when the loss came from a crash, our car accident practice and this one work the same file from day one.
If we don't win, you don't pay.
The consultation is free. The representation is on contingency. If there is no recovery, you owe no attorney fee.
Questions Families Ask
Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60 decides, by name. The surviving spouse or registered domestic partner, the children, and the children of any child who died before the decedent hold the claim. If there is no surviving spouse, partner, or issue, the right passes to the people who would inherit under intestate succession, which can include parents. The statute also protects certain financially dependent people, including a putative spouse, that spouse's children, stepchildren, and parents.
Someone whose marriage to the decedent turns out to be legally void or voidable, but who believed in good faith that the marriage was valid. California refuses to punish that good faith. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60, a putative spouse who was dependent on the decedent may bring a wrongful death claim, and so may the putative spouse's children in the circumstances the statute describes. These cases are fact-heavy and deserve careful handling, not assumptions.
Often, yes, by one of two doors. If the child left no surviving spouse, domestic partner, or children, the parents typically inherit under intestate succession and therefore hold the wrongful death claim. Separately, a parent who was financially dependent on the decedent may bring a claim even when other heirs exist. Which door applies changes the analysis and sometimes the recovery, so this is one of the first questions we sort out.
Sometimes. Stepchildren who were financially dependent on the decedent may bring a claim under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60. An unmarried partner is harder: the statute protects a registered domestic partner and a good-faith putative spouse, but a partner who never married and never registered generally does not hold a wrongful death claim, no matter how long or how real the relationship was. If this is your situation, call us before assuming anything in either direction.
California expects the wrongful death claim to be resolved in a single action that includes everyone who holds it. Practically, that means the heirs should be identified early and completely, because a missing heir creates problems for the family and ammunition for the defense. When family members disagree or cannot be located, there are procedures for that; what there is not room for is guessing. We map the family under the statute before we file.
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