A wrongful death claim is not the claim the deceased person had. It is a new claim, created by statute, belonging to specified people, for their own losses. This article explains that distinction and why it determines everything that follows: who may sue, what may be recovered, and who gets the money. It covers the two claims that usually run together — the wrongful death claim for the survivors' losses and the survival action for what the decedent suffered before dying — and why they have different plaintiffs, different damages, and sometimes different deadlines. It explains why an estate must be opened before anyone has authority to preserve evidence or file suit, why a family's expectations about who receives the money are frequently wrong, and how distribution disputes divide families more reliably than the underlying case divides the parties. It closes with the first two weeks after a death.