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CLASSIFICATION OF WRONGFUL DEATH SETTLEMENT
© 1998 National Legal Research Group, Inc.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Lewis v. Lewis, 708 A.2d 249 (D.C. 1998).
The proceeds of a settlement for the wrongful death of the wife's child by a prior union were her separate property.
Two years after the parties got married, the wife's daughter from a prior union died. The wife filed a wrongful death and survival action in connection with her daughter's death. The action was eventually settled, and the proceeds were distributed in accordance with the laws of intestate succession.
In the wife's divorce action, the husband claimed that the settlement proceeds received by the wife were marital property. The funds were acquired during the marriage and were not acquired by gift, bequest, devise, or descent so as to come within that statutory category of separate property, the husband argued. The trial court rejected the husband's argument and classified the proceeds as the wife's separate property.
After scrutinizing the statutes governing wrongful death and survival actions, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals likewise held that the settlement proceeds were the wife's separate property.
The court noted that the governing wrongful death statute provides for damages to inure to the benefit of the decedent's family, to be distributed to the next of kin as provided in the verdict or in the statute governing distribution of estates. Similarly, the survival statute preserves for the decedent's estate a right of action that the decedent had before death, with damages to be distributed in accordance with the decedent's will or the laws of intestacy. In light of the intended beneficiaries and manner of distribution, the proceeds of survival and wrongful death actions have characteristics similar, if not identical, to property acquired by gift, bequest, devise, or descent, the court decided.
The logic behind the exemption for property acquired by gift, bequest, devise, or descent is that "`when property is acquired by one spouse in one of these ways, there normally would be little basis for an objectively reasonable expectation of an interest in that property on the part of the other spouse.'" Id. at 251 (quoting Hemily v. Hemily, 403 A.2d 1139, 1142 (D.C. 1979)). The husband here, who was not the deceased girl's biological father, was not within the class of people intended to benefit from either the wrongful death or the survival action, in that he was not a beneficiary of her estate or her next of kin. Therefore, the husband had no objectively reasonable expectation of an interest in the proceeds, and they were properly classified as the wife's separate property, the court concluded.
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