§ 71.010.Award and Apportionment of Damages

How the award is made and how it is split.

The jury may award damages in an amount proportionate to the injury resulting from the death. The damages awarded shall be divided, in shares as found by the jury in its verdict, among the individuals who are entitled to recover and who are alive at that time.

The apportionment is the jury's, not the court's, and the shares appear in the verdict. Each beneficiary's loss is measured separately — a jury may find a surviving spouse's loss greater than an adult child's, and say so in the numbers.

"Who are alive at that time" excludes a beneficiary who has died before the verdict. Their share does not pass to their estate; they do not take.

That follows from what wrongful death damages compensate. The claim is for the survivor's own loss — companionship, society, mental anguish, and pecuniary support — and a person who has died has no continuing loss to compensate.

The distinction from the survival action is exactly here. A survival claim belongs to the decedent's estate and compensates what the decedent suffered before death; a wrongful death claim belongs to the survivors and compensates what they lost. The two are commonly pleaded together and produce separate awards.