How to run Wrongful Death Damages in DocketMath for Tennessee

6 min read

Published June 4, 2026 • By DocketMath Team

Under review

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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Laws change frequently — verify all citations with current official sources.

Step-by-step

Below is a practical workflow for running Wrongful Death Damages in DocketMath for Tennessee (US‑TN) using jurisdiction-aware rules. This guide focuses on how to set up inputs correctly so DocketMath calculates the damages you intend—without trying to replace legal advice.

1) Open the correct calculator

Go to the primary calculator: /tools/wrongful-death-damages
Select jurisdiction: Tennessee (US‑TN) if prompted.
Confirm you’re using the Wrongful Death Damages calculator (not a different tool like survivorship or another damages type).

2) Set the case fundamentals (the inputs that drive results)

In the calculator, you’ll typically enter facts like:

Decedent’s date of injury / date of death (or both, depending on the form)
Wrongful act timing (if the UI separates “incident date” from “death date”)
Economic loss inputs (often including lost earnings/benefits categories)
Non-economic loss inputs (if the tool supports them as separate fields)
Offsets or caps fields (only if the UI provides them)

When you enter numbers, keep them consistent with the time period you intend the calculation to cover. DocketMath uses your inputs to compute the damages totals it models.

3) Verify Tennessee’s “survival of the claim” concept in your timeline

Tennessee’s statute reflects that the right of action for injuries causing death doesn’t simply vanish upon death; it “passes” according to statute language. Use this as an eligibility and timeline sanity check while entering dates.

Tennessee citation (jurisdiction-aware rule):
Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-5-106 provides that the right of action for injuries that cause death “shall not abate or be extinguished by the person's death but shall pass…” (statute language continues). Source: https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/acts/code/title-20/chapter-5/

How this affects your DocketMath workflow (important limitation):

No claim-type-specific sub-rule was found in the provided Tennessee jurisdiction data.
Therefore, don’t add extra “special period” logic inside your workflow unless DocketMath’s Tennessee ruleset explicitly prompts for it.
Treat the statute as supporting the continuation/passage concept for the claim after death, while the calculator’s fields and date inputs determine the modeled damages window and categories.

4) Enter economic loss inputs carefully (and keep units consistent)

Economic-loss fields are where most calculation errors happen. Before you type anything:

Check whether DocketMath expects annual, monthly, or weekly earnings (the UI should indicate the unit).
Enter gross vs. net consistently with what the field describes.
If the calculator uses dates to model a duration, make sure your earnings/benefits assumptions align with that duration.

Quick checklist for economic inputs

The earnings/benefits value matches the unit shown next to the field
The dates imply the same start/end window for the losses you’re modeling
Any benefit amounts align with the category names the UI provides

5) Add non-economic loss inputs (if available in the tool)

If the Wrongful Death Damages calculator includes non-economic categories:

Enter amounts directly if the UI uses numeric fields.
If the UI uses structured inputs (e.g., severity levels), apply them to the correct category labels as shown.

Because wrongful death damages can be structured differently across systems, it’s best to follow the calculator’s category design rather than forcing your own categories into unrelated fields.

6) Review the computed totals and breakdown

After entering your inputs, review:

The total wrongful death damages figure
The breakdown by category (economic / non-economic or the tool’s specific groupings)
Any intermediate subtotals the UI displays

Use the breakdown to validate your modeling choices:

Does the magnitude match what you’d expect given your date window?
Are losses concentrated in one category due to your inputs (rather than an input mismatch)?

7) Generate your output summary for decision-making

Once results look consistent with your intended assumptions:

Save/export the output if DocketMath provides that option.
Use the modeled totals as part of internal case review, documentation, and discussion—keeping in mind the tool is modeling damages based on your inputs rather than providing legal advice.

Warning (practical modeling): Don’t mix date windows or earnings assumptions across fields. If you enter earnings tied to one timeframe but death/injury inputs imply a different timeframe, the totals can appear plausible while being conceptually inconsistent.

Common pitfalls

Here are the mistakes that most frequently lead to incorrect or misleading results when running wrongful death damages in DocketMath for Tennessee (US‑TN).

1) Confusing “injury date” and “death date”

If a tool uses both dates differently, swapping them can:

make the damages window too long/short
still produce a detailed-looking output that masks the timeline error

Fix: Re-check each date field label and ensure the correct event is mapped to each field.

2) Assuming Tennessee has claim-type-specific survival timing rules (without tool support)

For the Tennessee data provided here:

No claim-type-specific sub-rule was found.
So you should not invent specialized survival timing logic in the calculator.

Fix: Use only the behavior DocketMath’s Tennessee workflow expects for the inputs you’re given.

3) Entering earnings in the wrong unit (annual vs monthly vs weekly)

Fix: Always confirm the unit shown beside the input field before entry.

4) Leaving offsets/caps blank when the UI provides them

If DocketMath includes fields for offsets (e.g., benefits) or limits/caps:

leaving them blank can inflate totals
entering amounts into the wrong offset/cap field can reduce totals incorrectly

Fix: Populate only the fields that correspond to the UI’s labeled categories.

5) Forcing losses into categories that don’t match the UI

Category structures differ across wrongful death frameworks. If you manually convert your categories to the tool’s fields, you can accidentally:

double count
omit a category
put a loss into an “orphaned” field

Fix: Match losses to the calculator’s category names and structure as presented in the UI.

Try it

Ready to calculate? Use this quick Tennessee workflow:

Open /tools/wrongful-death-damages
Set jurisdiction to Tennessee (US‑TN)
Enter:
- your death/injury dates exactly as the labels describe
- economic loss inputs using the unit the UI specifies
- non-economic inputs only if the calculator provides those fields
Review the category breakdown and sanity-check the duration implied by your dates

If your first run produces a result that seems unexpectedly high or low:

verify the date window first
verify unit consistency for earnings/benefits
then check whether any offsets/caps fields should be populated

Note on statute usage: DocketMath’s Tennessee jurisdiction data references Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-5-106 for the survival/passage concept in wrongful death actions. Your dates and amounts still control the numeric output—so treat the statute as a rule for claim continuity, while the calculator models the damages categories based on your inputs.