Vocational Rehabilitation Assessments Services

Loss of Valuable Services (Estate) Report

No two households or family units are exactly the same. Therefore, the Board Certified assessor should ensure during the assessment that the deceased person’s human capital is based on his/ her contributions to the family unit prior to his/ her death. The resultant loss is based upon actual contributions versus generic statistics, and the loss is calculated using current labour market replacement costs.

In addressing the losses experienced by the family of the deceased, the assessor should consider the following:

Dependency on Household Services:

It is generally assumed that the survivors will require between 80 to 100 percent of the value of the deceased’s household services. Therefore, our Board Certified assessors consider the following:

  • The contributions of the deceased to housekeeping tasks such as cleaning, meal preparation, meal cleanup, laundry, pet care, household administration, child care, transportation, etc.
  • The contributions of the deceased to household maintenance tasks such as lawn care, snow clearing, interior/ exterior painting/ staining, cleaning windows and gutters, cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood, etc. For example, if the deceased had mowed the lawn once a week, the survivors’ standard of living will only be maintained if the lawn continues to be mowed once a week.

Duration of the Children’s Dependency:

  • It is often assumed that each child’s dependency will end at the time that he or she reaches age 18. There are two major exceptions to this assumption. First, many parents continue to support their children well after age 18 if they attend post-secondary educational institutions. If it can be shown that the children in question are likely to continue their education beyond high school and that their parents would have supported them, the dependency period can be extended to that predicted age of graduation. Second, even when children are no longer dependent upon their parent’s incomes, they often receive valuable services from their parents. For example, in circumstances where a child planned to attend university prior to the death of a parent, he or she should be considered financially dependent upon the deceased parent until the completion of his or her studies and entering the workforce, which would be beyond age 18.

This report includes a description of the individual’s pre-accident role within their household, including whether there was a reasonable expectation that the deceased would have provided support to his/ her children during post-secondary education, as gathered from the assessment. This report will also discuss the pre-accident division of household responsibilities in the individual’s household, as well as the responsibilities that have been taken on by other family members including the value of such human capital.