Claiming when someone dies at work

If you’re making a claim after someone has died at work, you’ll need to give us a workers’ compensation medical certificate that shows the person’s cause of death.

If you’re not able to give us this we’ll need one of the following:

• the autopsy (post mortem) report
• the person’s death certificate
• the Coroner’s Inquest report.

To be able to make a claim after somebody has died at work, you’ll need to show you’re either a member of their family and/or were dependent on them.

To prove you’re a member of their family you can provide us with:

• for a wife or husband—your marriage certificate
• for a defacto spouse—proof of your defacto relationship, for example;
  • joint bank accounts
  • documents showing you owned property together
  • electricity or other bills in both your names
• for a dependent child, whether a child or grandchild of the person who has died—a birth certificate
• for a dependent child over the age of 16—proof of full-time education
• for a foster child—relevant documentation from the Department of Children's Services.

If you’re claiming you were dependent on the person who has died, we need to work out the value of that dependence (how much you depended on them). This is important so we can get your claim right for you.

To work it out, we look at things like:

• tax returns for you and the person who died, for the three years before their death
• any child support details
• bank statements from you and the person who died that show:
  • money being transferred from the deceased person's account to your account
  • payments for things like groceries and bills
  • your income.

We may also take a statement that covers:

• the circumstances of the dependence (i.e. how long, how it came about)
• how you shared day to day expenses
• whether you owned any property together.
• whether you suffer from any disability
• an estimate of how much the loss of dependence is worth to you
• how long the dependency would have continued if the person had not died
• any other proof that the deceased person was supporting you financially.

A ‘latent onset injury’ is a condition caused by exposure to something (e.g. the sun or a chemical) but that takes a long time to make a person sick. Examples of this are skin cancer and mesothelioma.

If you’re making a claim for someone who has died from a latent onset injury, we need to work out whether they were a worker when they were exposed to whatever caused their illness.

Some things that will help us do this are:

• a statement from you about the deceased person's work history and relevant exposure
• tax returns, payslips or other employment documents dated during the period of exposure.

If there are no documents available that prove employment, we can take statements from co-workers.