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Workers' Compensation Survivors' Benefits for Suicide

Most, if not all, states' workers' compensation systems offer survivors' benefits, sometimes called death benefits, as a safety net to the surviving dependents - usually spouses and children - of workers whose deaths are connected to work-related injuries or illnesses. The particular details of the survivors' benefits programs vary by state, but most provide burial benefits plus some proportion of the workers' wages. What workers' comp relief might there be for surviving dependents of workers who take their own lives by suicide?

Some states deny workers' compensation survivor benefits for worker suicide outright on the premise that intentional self-inflicted injuries are noncompensable. In these jurisdictions there is resistance to public assistance in circumstances of workers' willful or deliberate harm to themselves.

However, a majority of states allow survivors' benefits for suicide when the chain-of-causation test is met. Under the chain-of-causation test, for a causal connection between a work-related injury or illness and the suicide to exist

1. The worker must sustain a work-related injury or illness that
2. causes a mental disturbance or derangement that brings about irrational thinking, compulsion, or loss of judgment that
3. results in suicide.

Some jurisdictions reason that in this situation the work-related mental disturbance so impacts the worker's judgment and rationality that it negates any intention of harm to self.

Some states require that the initial work-related injury or illness be physical, while others allow the initial illness to be a mental one, such as work-related anxiety or depression. For example, in a Kansas case, the court interpreted strictly the Kansas requirement that the initial work-related injury be physical in the case of a psychologist working in an extremely stressful setting in a state hospital who ultimately suffered from depression that led to suicide. The court reluctantly and sympathetically affirmed the Workers' Compensation Board's denial of benefits to his surviving spouse because there was insufficient evidence of a link between the development of brain lesions, a physical illness, and the stress and depression that led to his suicide. Howell v. State, No. 90,271, 2004 WL 324408 (Kan. App. 2004).

By contrast, a New York court found that a causal relationship between a worker's employment and suicide existed where the circumstances of employment caused progressive depression resulting in eventual suicide and held that benefits were appropriate. No physical injury was required or even discussed in this case. Miller v. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 631, 654 N.Y.S.2d 460 (App. Div. 1997).

Because the factual details of such heartbreaking situations vary so greatly, because the law differs widely between the various states, and because this area of law is rapidly changing and developing, consultation with a knowledgeable workers' compensation attorney is in your best interest if you are faced with the tragedy of work-related suicide in your family.

Illustrative Workers' Comp Survivors' Claims for Suicide

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Illustrative Workers' Comp Survivors' Claims for Suicide

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