California death benefits

A death benefit is not a valuation. It is a schedule, and the schedule is set by who depended on the person who died.

Labor Code § 4702, for injuries on or after January 1, 2006. Burial expenses are $10,000 on top, under § 4701.

Three things the table does not show you

It is paid in installments, not as a cheque. § 4702 requires it to be paid "in installments in the same manner and amounts as temporary total disability indemnity would have to be made to the employee", and "no payment shall be made at a weekly rate of less than two hundred twenty-four dollars ($224)."

Minor children do not stop at the total. Under § 4703.5, payments to totally dependent minor children continue "until the youngest child attains 18 years of age" — notwithstanding the maximums in §§ 4702 and 4703 — and to 19 for a child of certain law enforcement and firefighting personnel still in high school. In a young family this is frequently worth more than the headline figure, and it is the part most often not explained.

Total dependency is argued. Whether a spouse, an adult child, a parent, or a partner was totally dependent is a legal question with real money on it, and carriers contest it.

The deadline

One year from the date of death under Labor Code § 5406(a) — "Except as provided in Section 5406.5, 5406.6, or 5406.7" — and § 5406.7 reaches 420 weeks from the date of injury for the conditions it covers. How the deadline actually works.

And the claim this does not cover

Workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy against the employer. It is not the exclusive remedy against anyone else. Under Labor Code § 3852(a) the family keeps its right of action "for all damages proximately resulting from the injury or death against any person other than the employer."

That claim pays for things this system never pays for — and one component of it changed on January 1, 2026. Wrongful death, and what changed.