Maryland Personal Injury Lawyers
That creates a real problem because Maryland wrongful death law is not built around the family members who are easiest to find. It is built around all statutory beneficiaries. So if a person is a wrongful death beneficiary, the lawyer cannot simply pretend that person does not exist because they are inconvenient, missing, estranged, or uncooperative.
What Is a Use Plaintiff in a Wrongful Death Case?
What exactly is a use plaintiff? A use plaintiff is the owner of a beneficial interest for whose benefit a lawsuit is technically being brought. In this context, it means someone who is technically a wrongful death beneficiary but is not actively joining in the lawsuit as a regular plaintiff.
So, for example, if a man dies and leaves behind a wife and three adult children, all four may be wrongful death beneficiaries. If the wife and two children want to bring the lawsuit but the third child cannot be located, the missing child still has to be dealt with in the lawsuit. That missing child may be named as a use plaintiff.
The phrase sounds more complicated than it is. A use plaintiff is basically a beneficiary whose rights have to be protected even though that person is not participating in the case.
Only One Maryland Wrongful Death Lawsuit Is Allowed
Although there can be many beneficiaries in a fatality claim, Maryland’s wrongful death statute allows for only one lawsuit on behalf of the beneficiaries.
Assuming the person who suffered the accidental death had wrongful death beneficiaries, any damages that are awarded are supposed to be in proportion to the loss each beneficiary suffered. So if one beneficiary was extremely close to the decedent and another had not seen the decedent in 20 years, a jury may give the estranged beneficiary little or nothing.
That is how the law works when the case goes to trial, and the jury is asked to divide the damages. The jury can hear the evidence and decide how the recovery should be split.
But most wrongful death cases settle before trial. That is where things get messy. How do you settle and divide money when one beneficiary is missing, unresponsive, hostile, or unwilling to participate?
The Practical Problem for Wrongful Death Lawyers
The problem is that logic prevails only when all beneficiaries are present at trial and the case proceeds to a jury verdict. Most wrongful death cases settle before trial. So the question becomes how you can proceed and potentially split settlement proceeds with a party that you cannot find or who is unable or unwilling to participate.
What do wrongful death lawyers filing a lawsuit do when faced with this situation?
First, all statutory beneficiaries must be named as plaintiffs. If a plaintiff does not join the action, they must still be identified in the wrongful death lawsuit as a use plaintiff. While the lawsuit may proceed without the active participation of a use plaintiff, the lawsuit continues to protect that use plaintiff’s interest.
The key for wrongful death lawyers is to identify the use plaintiff, make a good faith and reasonably diligent effort to locate that person, and give the required notice. If the beneficiary cannot be found, the lawyer needs to be able to show the court what was done to find them.
Maryland Use Plaintiff Roadmap
| Problem | What the Lawyer Must Do | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Beneficiary is known and cooperative | Name the person as a plaintiff if they are joining the case. | This is the cleanest situation. Everyone is participating and the settlement split can be addressed directly. |
| Beneficiary is known but will not participate | Name the person as a use plaintiff and serve the required notice. | A beneficiary cannot be ignored just because they refuse to cooperate. |
| Beneficiary is known but missing | Make a good faith and reasonably diligent search, name the person as a use plaintiff if required, and document the search efforts. | The court will want to know that the missing beneficiary was not intentionally left out. |
| Possible beneficiary may exist | Investigate family history, prior marriages, children, adoption, dependency, and
known relatives. |
This is where mistakes happen. A lawyer cannot simply rely on the first family member’s version of the family tree as the Muti case discussed below shows us. |
| Case is settling | Address the use of plaintiffs’ interest before settlement funds are distributed. | This is the danger zone. A settlement that ignores a beneficiary can create later litigation and malpractice exposure. |
What Maryland Rule 15-1001 Requires
Maryland Rule 15-1001 and Maryland Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 3-904 are the starting points for this issue.
The rule requires that all persons who are or may be entitled to damages by reason of the wrongful death be named as plaintiffs, whether or not they actively join in the action. If the person does not join in the action, the words “to the use of” should appear before that person’s name.
The current rule also requires that use plaintiffs receive notice of the wrongful death action and their right to participate. The practical point is simple: if someone is a potential beneficiary, the lawyer bringing the wrongful death case must take the person seriously and make a record of the effort to identify, locate, and notify them.
This does not mean you must always succeed in finding the use plaintiff. Some people just cannot be found. The law recognizes that. But you better look. And if you cannot find the person, you need to be able to explain what you did and why the search was reasonable.
What Does a Good Faith Search Look Like?
There is no magic checklist that works in every wrongful death case. But the lawyer should be thinking about the same basic question from the beginning: who could possibly have a claim under the wrongful death statute?
That usually means asking about:
- spouses and former spouses
- children from the current marriage
- children from prior relationships
- adopted children
- parents of the decedent
- estranged family members
- relatives who may have been substantially dependent on the decedent if there are no primary beneficiaries
- family members who live out of state
- family members whose names have changed
In a clean case, the family structure is obvious. In a difficult case, it is not. The lawyer may need to review estate records, obituaries, probate filings, prior lawsuits, medical records, emergency contact forms, birth records, social media, skip-trace results, and information from relatives.
The point is not perfection. The point is reasonable diligence. If the issue later comes before a judge, you want to be able to show that the missing beneficiary was not ignored.
What If the Use Plaintiff Does Not Want to Participate?
Sometimes the use plaintiff is not missing. They just do not want to participate. They may be estranged from the family. They may not want to relive the death. They may distrust the other beneficiaries. They may believe they are entitled to more money than everyone else thinks they should receive. Or they may simply refuse to sign anything.
That does not stop the case from existing. A use plaintiff who refuses to cooperate still has to be named and notified if they are a statutory beneficiary. Their refusal to participate may affect how the case is managed, but it does not allow the other beneficiaries to erase them from the lawsuit.
The hard part is settlement. Defendants and insurers want finality. They do not want to pay a settlement and later face a claim from a beneficiary who says they were cut out. So an uncooperative use plaintiff can slow down settlement, complicate distribution, and force the parties to seek court involvement.
What If the Use Plaintiff Is Estranged?
Estrangement does not automatically eliminate a wrongful death beneficiary’s legal status. A child who has not seen a parent in years may still be a statutory beneficiary. A parent who had a distant relationship with an adult child may still need to be named.
But estrangement can matter to damages. Maryland wrongful death damages are supposed to be proportioned to the injury resulting from the death. A beneficiary who had a close, loving, dependent relationship with the decedent may have a much stronger damages claim than a beneficiary who had little or no relationship.
That distinction is important. Being a beneficiary gets the person into the case. It does not guarantee an equal share of the recovery.
How Are Settlement Proceeds Split?
If the case goes to verdict, the jury can divide the wrongful death damages among the beneficiaries in proportion to their losses. But if the case settles, the division is often negotiated among the beneficiaries, their lawyers, and sometimes with court approval or court involvement.
In many cases, the split is straightforward. In others, it is the hardest part of the case. The beneficiaries may disagree about who had the closest relationship with the decedent. They may disagree about who provided care, who depended on the decedent, or who suffered the greatest emotional loss.
When there is a missing or non-cooperating use plaintiff, settlement proceeds may need to be held, protected, allocated, or addressed by court order. The last thing a wrongful death lawyer wants is to distribute every dollar and then have a use plaintiff show up later claiming the settlement ignored their rights.
Why This Rule Exists
The use plaintiff rule exists because Maryland allows only one wrongful death lawsuit. If only one lawsuit is allowed, the law has to protect everyone who may have a right to recover in that lawsuit.
Without this rule, the first family member to file could control the case, settle it, and cut out everyone else. That would be unfair. It would also create chaos for defendants, insurers, and courts because every omitted beneficiary would have an argument that their rights were never protected.
The rule requires the case to address all potential beneficiaries at once. It is annoying. It can slow things down. But it is designed to prevent a worse problem later.
Use Plaintiff Case Law in Maryland
The two cases lawyers usually start with are Williams v. Work and Muti v. University of Maryland Medical System.
Williams v. Work is the cautionary tale. The case shows why wrongful death lawyers must be careful when settlements are approved without properly protecting all known statutory beneficiaries. The opinion famously described the issue as a largely unmapped swamp. That is a pretty accurate description. Use plaintiff problems can turn a settlement into a mess if they are not handled correctly.
Muti v. University of Maryland Medical System involved a long-lost relative problem. The plaintiffs knew the decedent had an adopted son from a prior marriage but did not know where he was and did not name him as a use plaintiff. The trial court dismissed the wrongful death claims for failure to join him, but the Maryland high court reversed. The court held that dismissal was too harsh under the circumstances, while still recognizing that Rule 15-1001 had been violated.
The lesson from Muti is not that lawyers can ignore missing beneficiaries. They cannot. The lesson is that courts will look at the totality of the circumstances, including whether the omission looked like a mistake or an attempt to hide the case from someone who had a right to know.
2026 Update: The Rule Is Now More Focused on Reasonable Diligence
Since this post was originally written, Maryland Rule 15-1001 has been amended in response to cases like Muti. The rule now focuses heavily on the duty of the named plaintiffs to make a good faith and reasonably diligent effort to identify, locate, and name as use plaintiffs any potential beneficiaries.
That is the right focus. The law should not require the impossible. If a beneficiary cannot be found after a real search, the case should not automatically die. But the lawyer must conduct the search, document it, and be candid with the court.
This is where wrongful death lawyers earn their money. The problem is rarely the rule itself. The problem is knowing how to manage a missing or difficult beneficiary without delaying the case forever or creating a future challenge to the settlement.
Practical Advice for Families
If you are bringing a Maryland wrongful death claim, tell your lawyer about every possible beneficiary, even if you think the person does not deserve anything.
Do not hide an estranged child. Do not leave out a parent because the relationship was bad. Do not assume a stepchild, adopted child, or child from a prior relationship does not matter. Let the lawyer make that determination.
Families sometimes think they are helping the case by keeping things simple. They are not. If a potential beneficiary is omitted and later appears, the case can become far more complicated than it needed to be.
Practical Advice for Lawyers
For lawyers, the lesson is simple: build the use plaintiff issue into the file from the beginning.
- Ask detailed family-history questions at intake.
- Confirm whether there are children from prior relationships.
- Ask about adoption.
- Ask about estranged parents or children.
- Review probate filings and estate documents.
- Document every search effort.
- Name use plaintiffs when required.
- Serve the required notice.
- Do not distribute settlement proceeds until beneficiary issues are resolved.
None of this is glamorous. But it can save the case. More importantly, it can protect the settlement from being attacked later.
Bottom Line
Maryland wrongful death use plaintiff problems are easy to underestimate. They look like housekeeping issues until they threaten a settlement, delay distribution, or create a fight among beneficiaries.
The safest approach is to identify every possible beneficiary early, make a real effort to locate anyone who is missing, name non-participating beneficiaries as use plaintiffs when required, and protect their interests until the court or the parties resolve how the case will proceed.
Some people cannot be found. Some people will not cooperate. Some people may have little or no real damages. But in a Maryland wrongful death case, you do not get to ignore them just because they make the case harder.