On April 20, 2026, as jury selection began in a Broward County courtroom, Tesla quietly settled the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Edgar Monserratt Martinez — a teenager killed in a May 2018 crash when the driver was traveling at 116 mph in a 30 mph zone along A1A in Fort Lauderdale. Tesla had been sued by the family of the 18-year-old passenger, with plaintiffs alleging that a Tesla technician disabled a speed limiter without parental consent. The case was set to go to trial on April 20, 2026, but Tesla was removed as a defendant via court order the day before, with the settlement confirmed as jury selection got underway. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The timing was deliberate: the case had exposed a painful gap in how the public understands wrongful death damages. Edgar was young. He had no salary, no career history, no dependents. So how do forensic economists build a multi-million-dollar damages claim around someone with zero wage loss? The answer, increasingly, runs through a category called lost household services wrongful death — and understanding how it is calculated can reshape what families and attorneys expect from any wrongful death case.
Why the Martinez Settlement Reignited the Household Services Debate
The Martinez case did not exist in a vacuum. A related Riley family trial in 2022 produced a jury verdict finding Tesla only 1% negligent, assigning 90% of the blame to Barrett Riley and 9% to his father, on total damages of $10.5 million — meaning Tesla’s actual share came out to roughly $105,000. Since a Miami jury returned a landmark $243 million Autopilot verdict, Tesla has continued to face wrongful death litigation on multiple fronts. In September 2025, Tesla settled a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from a 2019 crash in California that killed a 15-year-old boy while the company’s Autopilot system was engaged — a case that drew national attention because it highlighted the growing tension between cutting-edge technology and traditional principles of negligence and product liability. Each of those cases forced the same actuarial reckoning: when the decedent is a minor, a retiree, or a non-working caregiver, the household services line item frequently becomes the largest single component of provable economic damages. The Tesla-Martinez settlement renewed urgent questions among families and attorneys about how a lost household services wrongful death calculation actually works — and what a properly designed calculator should do with this data.
If your case involves a fatal car accident, a car accident settlement calculator can help you understand the full range of economic damages before consulting a forensic economist.
What Counts as Lost Household Services in a Wrongful Death Claim
Courts and forensic economists recognize household services as the unpaid labor a decedent performed — and would have continued performing — for the benefit of the household. These tasks carry measurable market value even though no paycheck was ever written. According to forensic accounting guidance from the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA), standard lost household services wrongful death categories include:
- Childcare and supervision — including transportation, homework assistance, and emotional support
- Meal preparation and cleanup
- Housecleaning and laundry
- Lawn care, landscaping, and exterior maintenance
- Home repair and general maintenance
- Financial management — bill payment, tax preparation, budgeting oversight
- Shopping and consumer errands — grocery runs, returns, online purchasing coordination
- Pet care
- Vehicle maintenance coordination
- Elder care and caregiving for household members
The Bureau of Labor Statistics formally defines household services to include housecleaning, cooking, lawn care and landscaping, pet care, tailoring, laundering, dry cleaning, vehicle maintenance and repairs, and home repairs, maintenance, and construction. The key legal point is that a forensic economist determines the economic value of these lost services in the marketplace. Naturally, the injured or deceased victim provided household services without pay — but that does not mean the services had no value. All work that creates a benefit has economic value, whether or not compensation is paid for the work.
One jurisdictional nuance matters here: in jurisdictions where the loss is only to the survivors, and the decedent performed household services exclusively for their own benefit — such as a single decedent with no dependents — there may be no compensable loss of household services, because if there were no surviving household members who benefited from the decedent’s services, there is no recoverable loss to count.
The Three Accepted Valuation Methods Forensic Economists Use
Forensic economists use three primary methods to assign a dollar value to lost household services in wrongful death litigation. Each has different evidentiary requirements, different vulnerabilities on cross-examination, and different outcomes depending on the decedent’s age, household composition, and regional labor market.
Method 1: The Input Method
The input method — also called the opportunity cost method — values household services by asking what the decedent could have earned per hour in the paid labor market, then multiplies that wage rate by the number of hours spent on household tasks. The logic is that every hour spent cleaning, cooking, or supervising children was an hour the decedent sacrificed from potential paid employment. Forensic economists typically anchor the wage rate to BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data for comparable occupations. For high-earning decedents, the input method can produce very large household services valuations. Critics argue it overstates the loss because household tasks rarely require the same skill set as the decedent’s primary occupation.
Method 2: The Output Method
The output method values the household services by the market cost of the final product or service produced — not the labor time that went into it. For example, instead of valuing “2 hours of cooking at $X per hour,” the output method values the cost of purchasing equivalent restaurant or meal-kit meals. This method is rarely used in wrongful death litigation because it typically produces lower valuations and is harder to apply consistently across all household task categories. It appears more often in defense expert reports aimed at reducing damages.
Method 3: The Replacement Cost / Actual Cost Method
The replacement cost method is the most widely accepted approach in 2026 wrongful death litigation. It asks: what would it cost to hire a market substitute to perform each category of household service the decedent would have performed? Economists use Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data to identify the median hourly wage for the specific service worker category — housekeeper, childcare worker, groundskeeper, home health aide, or personal financial advisor — then multiply those rates by the ATUS-documented time allocations for each task. To translate the lost time into a dollar value, the economist multiplies the lost hours by an hourly wage. Because this method relies on actual market prices for identifiable services, it tends to survive Daubert challenges more reliably than the input method.
The Dollar Value of a Day and the American Time Use Survey
The empirical backbone of every household services calculation is the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), published annually by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ATUS provides nationally representative estimates of how, where, and with whom Americans spend their time, and is the only federal survey providing data on the full range of nonmarket activities.
The most recent data forensic economists are citing in 2026 is the 2025 ATUS release, published June 25, 2026. Key figures from the 2025 survey include:
- Household activities: 1.99 hours per day on average across all respondents in 2025.
- Caring for and helping household children and parents: 1.36 hours per day on average in 2025.
- Adults living in households with children under age 6 spent 2.4 hours providing primary childcare on an average weekday, and 2.0 hours on an average weekend day.
- Adults living in households with at least one child under age 13 spent an average of 5.1 hours per day providing secondary childcare — that is, having at least one child in their care while doing activities other than primary childcare.
These figures are broken down further by sex, employment status, household composition, and presence of children — allowing forensic economists to select the most demographically comparable reference population for each decedent. The 2025 ATUS data also confirms a persistent “chore gap,” with women spending more time on housework than men — a factor that directly affects how household services are allocated between spouses in wrongful death valuations.
In parallel with ATUS time data, forensic economists rely on wage benchmarks to convert hours into dollars. The HHS 2026 Standard Values for Regulatory Analysis report a central estimate of the value per statistical life of $14.1 million, with a default estimate of the hourly value of time for unpaid activities set at $20.27. This $20.27 hourly benchmark for unpaid time appears increasingly in household services expert reports as a conservative floor for non-specialized tasks.
State-Law Variations That Affect Every Household Services Calculation
The legal framework governing household services damages in wrongful death cases is not uniform. State law controls who can sue, what categories of damages are recoverable, whether caps apply, and how household services fit into the overall damages picture. Several significant legal changes have occurred in the 2025–2026 period that directly affect these calculations.
Colorado (effective January 1, 2025): Colorado’s wrongful death laws underwent significant changes effective January 1, 2025, through House Bill 24-1472, bringing increased compensation opportunities for families. The legislation made two major changes for cases filed on or after January 1, 2025: in limited situations, siblings can bring a wrongful death claim when there is no spouse, no descendants, no designated beneficiary, and no surviving parent; and the cap on noneconomic damages in many wrongful death actions increased to $2,125,000, with inflation adjustments beginning in 2028. Beginning January 1, 2025, the law also incrementally increases the medical malpractice wrongful death damages limitation to $1.575 million over the course of five years.
Florida (2026 legislative session): On January 15, 2026, the Florida House voted 88–17 to approve HB 6003, which would repeal a 1990 law that prevents adult children from recovering non-economic damages in wrongful death suits tied to medical negligence. However, the official Florida Statutes, current through the 2026 regular legislative session which adjourned in March 2026, confirm that section 768.21(8) remains in force, with no repeal enacted. Under Florida Statute § 768.21(8), when death results from medical malpractice, adult children cannot recover for lost parental companionship or mental pain and suffering, and parents of a deceased adult child also cannot recover for mental pain and suffering — restrictions that remain in effect as of 2026 despite ongoing legislative efforts to eliminate them.
Wisconsin: Wisconsin’s noneconomic damages limits for wrongful death remained unchanged as of 2026, holding at $350,000 for a deceased adult and $500,000 for a deceased minor under § 895.04, with these figures representing the noneconomic damages limit in effect in 2026 exactly as written.
California: California’s MICRA § 3333.2 caps non-economic damages in medical malpractice wrongful death cases, starting at $350,000 in 2025 and increasing annually. California places no cap on economic damages — which means household services, properly documented, face no ceiling in non-malpractice wrongful death cases.
Key national settlement benchmarks: Nine state constitutions forbid death-damage caps entirely, while several states cap wrongful death directly — Kansas at $250,000, Wisconsin at $350,000 for loss of society, and Tennessee at $750,000. The BJS median wrongful death trial award was $961,000, and med-mal jury awards had a $1.27 million median in 2020 data — but trials add years, costs, appeal risk, and the real possibility of zero.
Key Wrongful Death Damages Data: 2026 Reference Table
| Data Point | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Estimated U.S. traffic fatalities (2025) | 36,640 — a 6.7% decrease from 2024 | NHTSA, April 2026 |
| Wrongful death cases resolved before trial | ~96% | Bureau of Justice Statistics |
| Median wrongful death trial award (BJS) | $961,000 | Bureau of Justice Statistics |
| Average wrongful death settlement (all types) | $973,054 | Thomson Reuters / legal databases |
| Median wrongful death settlement | $294,728 | Thomson Reuters / legal databases |
| Typical medical malpractice wrongful death range | $1M–$5M | 2026 leading firm data |
| Typical motor vehicle/trucking wrongful death range | $500K–$2M | 2026 leading firm data |
| Largest 2025 wrongful death verdict (Texas) | $640 million (Loree v. TNT Crane) | Harris County District Court, May 2025 |
| ATUS average daily household activity time (2025) | 1.99 hours/day | BLS ATUS 2025 Results, June 2026 |
| ATUS average daily childcare time, children under 6 (weekdays, 2025) | 2.4 hours/day | BLS ATUS 2025 Results, June 2026 |
| HHS hourly value of unpaid time (2026) | $20.27/hour | HHS Standard RIA Values, March 2026 |
| HHS central value per statistical life (2026) | $14.1 million | HHS Standard RIA Values, March 2026 |
| Colorado noneconomic wrongful death cap (2026) | $2,125,000 (inflation-adjusted from 2028) | HB 24-1472, effective January 1, 2025 |
| Wisconsin noneconomic wrongful death cap (2026) | $350,000 (adult) / $500,000 (minor) | Wis. Stat. § 895.04 |
How a Wrongful Death Calculator Should Handle Lost Household Services
A properly designed wrongful death calculator approaches household services as a structured actuarial exercise, not a lump-sum estimate. It should prompt the user to input or confirm: (1) the decedent’s age, sex, employment status, and household composition at the time of death; (2) the presence and ages of dependent children; (3) the state of jurisdiction; and (4) the applicable life expectancy table. From those inputs, it applies ATUS time-use data to estimate hours per year in each service category, applies BLS replacement-cost wage rates to each category, discounts the resulting annual stream to present value using an appropriate discount rate, and flags any state-law cap that would truncate recovery.
Lost earnings tend to be the “star” of wrongful death cases, but household services are a critical co-star — and when a person loses their life, they are often also unable to continue doing household tasks that had real economic value to the surviving family. For cases involving minors or non-employed decedents, the household services line item can dwarf every other economic damages component. Roughly 96 percent of tort cases resolve without trial per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and fatal cases settle at similar rates because both sides face enormous verdict risk — meaning the household services figure in a demand package directly shapes what a defendant’s insurer is willing to offer.
If your case involves a fatal car accident, a car accident settlement calculator can provide an initial economic damages framework — including a household services estimate — before you engage a forensic economist for formal litigation support.
Frequently Asked Questions About Lost Household Services in Wrongful Death Cases
Can household services damages be claimed even if the decedent had a full-time job?
Yes. Employment status does not eliminate a household services claim. When an attorney hires a forensic economist for a wrongful death case, it is usually because the case involves lost earnings — but household services are an independent and parallel category of economic loss. A full-time employee who cooked dinner every night, handled all lawn maintenance, and provided primary childcare on weekends generated thousands of hours of household economic value annually. The forensic economist calculates both lost earnings and lost household services as separate line items. The fact that the decedent was employed may actually increase the household services valuation under the input method, because the opportunity cost of time is anchored to a higher wage rate.
How are household services calculated for a minor decedent with no earnings history?
For a minor decedent, the household services calculation works differently than for an adult. Because a minor has no established earnings history and has not yet formed their own household, the calculation projects forward to the age at which the decedent would have been expected to form a household, marry, and begin providing household services to dependents. Forensic economists use demographic probability tables — probability of marriage, probability of having children, expected number of children — from Census and actuarial data, then apply ATUS time-use estimates for adults in equivalent household configurations. Young decedents with decades of projected earnings and family dependency are among the highest-value wrongful death cases precisely because the household services projection spans 40 or more years and, when discounted to present value, can produce seven-figure standalone damages even without any wage loss component.
Which states do not allow lost household services as a separate damages category?
No state categorically prohibits lost household services as a damages category in wrongful death cases, but recovery can be effectively blocked by statutory caps, restrictive standing rules, or case law limiting economic damages to direct pecuniary loss. The practical limitations vary significantly. Several states cap wrongful death damages directly — Kansas at $250,000, Wisconsin at $350,000 for loss of society, and Tennessee at $750,000 — and in those jurisdictions the cap may compress the household services award below what the actuarial calculation would otherwise support. In Florida medical malpractice cases, adult children are barred from recovering non-economic damages such as emotional suffering, though economic damages including household services remain recoverable. The safest practice is to verify current statutory caps directly with a licensed attorney in the applicable jurisdiction before relying on any published table.
What is the difference between the input method and the replacement cost method for valuing household services?
The input method values the decedent’s time at the decedent’s own earning rate — essentially asking what the decedent gave up in terms of foregone wages to perform household tasks. The replacement cost method values the services at the market rate for a hired substitute who performs each specific task — a housekeeper, a childcare worker, a handyman, or a lawn care professional. A forensic economist determines the economic value of lost services in the marketplace. The injured or deceased victim provided household services without pay; vocational experts use medical and functional data to determine which tasks can no longer be performed, and forensic economists then compute the value of those lost services. In practice, the replacement cost method is more widely accepted by courts in 2026 because it relies on verifiable BLS occupational wage data rather than the potentially inflated opportunity cost of a high-earning decedent’s time.
Does a wrongful death calculator give me the final settlement value for household services damages?
No. A wrongful death calculator provides an actuarially grounded estimate — a starting point for negotiation and a framework for discussion with a forensic economist and trial attorney. An experienced wrongful death attorney can help families pursue compensation far beyond what any online calculator estimates. The calculator cannot account for jurisdiction-specific case law on discount rates, the strength or weakness of your expert witness, the defendant’s insurance policy limits, the venue’s historical jury behavior, or the many strategic factors that determine what a case actually settles for. Legal databases tracking over 956 wrongful death cases between 2019 and 2024 found that wrongful death settlement amounts vary dramatically based on numerous factors, making “average” figures somewhat misleading for individual cases — with a median settlement of $294,728 but a range extending from $100,000 to over $10 million depending on case specifics. Use the calculator to understand the structure and magnitude of the household services claim, then retain qualified counsel and a forensic economist to develop the figures into admissible expert testimony.
Margaret Whitfield is a Wrongful Death and Survivor Rights Advisor with extensive knowledge of personal injury law and settlement values across the United States. With years of experience analyzing wrongful death claims only (high value) cases, Margaret helps injury victims understand their legal rights and the potential value of their claims. Margaret is not an attorney and the information provided is for educational purposes only.