Study On The Nature And Division Of Death Indemnity

As a special compensation program, death indemnity is tortfeasor pays a certain amount of money to victim's close relatives when natural person's right to life suffers illegal violation that causing the damage of right to life itself and future income loss. Death indemnity is not only result from death, but also from the stipulation of law. In the last few years, death indemnity is always one of the hot topics, and many scholars had studied deeply on the issue"the same lives with different price", which is associated with death indemnity. As to academic research in this domain, in order to clarify whether death indemnity is material damage or spiritual damage, scholars have focused much more on its nature than on the division problem. Because of different views about the nature of death indemnity may lead to different division modes, this article researched both on the nature of death indemnity and its division. This article's main content lies in: insisted the research technique that link up theory with practice, demonstrated that death indemnity is the material damage from different angles, and defined clearly about some difficult problems such as main body for division, division principles.Death indemnity system is not an isolated system. It is closely related to tort liability system, criminal procedure system, family system, maintenance system and succession. So we should synthetic utilize relative knowledge to carry on thorough research. On the basis of this argument, this paper made a brief analysis for death indemnity and put forward some opinions.The article is divided into the following four parts.Part One:Put forward questions: some different cases. Through three typical cases about death indemnity, this section proposed the main issues which need to be discussed.Part Two:Definition and the current situation of death indemnity. Firstly, this section introduced some scholars' definitions for death indemnity, refined the characteristics of it.And then, briefly stated the two doctrines, that is,"the loss of dependency"and"the loss of inheritance". At the same time, this section analyzed our China's current legislation about death indemnity, as well as its shortcomings.Part Three:The nature of death indemnity. Although there are many debates on the nature of death indemnity, it could not change the fact that some factors should be considered when confirm the nature. This section confirmed the nature of death indemnity from four aspects, namely the right to life, the right of claim, compensation programs and vesting of property. Furthermore, by linking judicial practice, the author analyzed these issues: claiming for death indemnity in civil suit collateral to criminal proceedings, death indemnity in the vacancy of near relatives of the victim, death indemnity in medical malpractice, whether death indemnity can be see as a heritage or not.Part Four:Investigation on the division of death indemnity. Recently, disputes on the division of death indemnity are taking on an ascendant trend year by year, so it is very necessary to study the division problem. Therefore, this part mainly used relative knowledge including family, maintenance and succession to carry on study in some sides, such as the main body of division, the maintenance payments problem, the division principles. And then a typical case from Chengdu Intermediate People's Court was analyzed. Among these analyses, for the considerations of protecting the dependents' interests more effective and promoting the concept of social equity and justice, the author summarized some division principles for death indemnity, hoping to benefit our country's legislative and judicial work in the future.