Payments to bereaved people do not come close to the financial loss they actually suffer, researchers claim.
Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of London’s Institute of Education found the financial impact on a bereaved person’s life could reach £312,000, but, for example, the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 provides only £10,000 for bereavement.
However, as the report’s author, Professor Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick, points out, this is only available to the husband or wife of the deceased, or, if the deceased was unmarried and a minor, to the parents. It does not give children a claim for the death of a parent.
The researchers looked into more than 2,000 bereavements and applied the latest statistical tools in “happiness research” to test court awards. They calculated financial averages for different types of bereavement that they claim are “rooted in the real loss felt rather than the ad hoc approach produced by the courts”. For example, the financial impact of loss of a child was put at £126,000, loss of
