Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Pennsylvania

Let's see - are you going to listen to the attorney handling the case or nameless faceless people who don't have a law degree? Would you let a well meaning plumber do heart surgery on you? Or your mechanic do your taxes as a CPA? If the answer is no, then do not get your legal advice from well-meaning but ill-informed non-lawyers.

PA law (assuming the estate is there) says that if someone else's wrongful act caused the death of your father, then your father's heirs (limited to spouse, children or parents) can sue the person who caused the death. Any recovery then gets distributed to the heirs as per intestacy law and is exempt from claims of creditors. Law is below:

42 Pa.C.S.A. � 8301. Death action

(a) General rule.--An action may be brought, under procedures prescribed by general rules, to recover damages for the death of an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect or unlawful violence or negligence of another if no recovery for the same damages claimed in the wrongful death action was obtained by the injured individual during his lifetime and any prior actions for the same injuries are consolidated with the wrongful death claim so as to avoid a duplicate recovery.

(b) Beneficiaries.--Except as provided in subsection (d), the right of action created by this section shall exist only for the benefit of the spouse, children or parents of the deceased, whether or not citizens or residents of this Commonwealth or elsewhere. The damages recovered shall be distributed to the beneficiaries in the proportion they would take the personal estate of the decedent in the case of intestacy and without liability to creditors of the deceased person under the statutes of this Commonwealth.

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However, your post is unclear. Yuou indicate that your father was settling a case before he died. It would thus appear that the car accident did not cause his death, but it is possible that the accident set in motion a chain of events which led to your father's death. If your father just had an auto accident but the accident was not the cause of death, then the car accident action could be continued by the executor of the estate. However, any recovery from this action would not be under the wrongful death action statute quoted above. Any recovery would be owed to your father's estate and would be available to satisfy the claims of any creditors.

If the car accident caused or led to your father's death, then the wrongful death statute would apply and any recovery would be distributed to you as your father's heir free of creditor's claims.

So what you need to ask the attorney is whether you have a survival action or an action under the wrongful death statute to know if you are entitled to 100% of the recovery or not.