Grief and involvement in wrongful death litigation

The theory of grief work, symbolic interaction theory, and family systems theory are used to gain theoretical perspective on the impact on a family of involvement in wrongful death litigation. Involvement in litigation may speed up, slow down, or alter an individual litigant's grieving, and any of these effects may alienate the litigant from nonlitigant kin. The completion of litigation, no matter what the outcome, may lead to renewed or to new grieving and relationship problems. The theoretical analysis includes discussion of the entanglement of the attorney in the individual grief process and in family tensions.