When a worker dies, the family members who most need the death benefit are often the ones who assume they cannot get it. An adult son or daughter who does not live with the worker. A parent who got help with the rent. Someone who was supported, but not entirely, and not on paper.
The assumption is that dependency means you relied on the deceased for everything. It does not. A Third Department decision from this year shows how modest the real test is.
The case
A drugstore worker died of COVID-19 in March 2020, contracted at work. He left an adult son, born in 1991, who is autistic and requires constant care. The son lived with his mother, who had stopped working in 1998 to care for him, and the son’s half-brother later became his legal guardian and the household’s only wage earner.
The question on appeal was whether the son was a dependent of his father for purposes of death benefits under Workers’ Compensation Law § 16. The Board found he was. The Third Department affirmed (Matter of Villalba v Rite Aid Pharmacy, 3d Dept, Apr. 16, 2026, Docket No. CV-24-1580).
The test is not total support
Here is the standard, in the court’s own words:
“In reviewing determinations of the Board regarding dependency for purposes of entitlement to death benefits pursuant to Workers’ Compensation Law § 16, we have consistently based our decisions on the existence of some proof that the loss of decedent’s financial contribution had an adverse or detrimental effect on the claimant.”
Read what that does and does not require. It does not require that the deceased was your only source of money. It does not require that you lived together. It does not require a support order, a lease, or any particular document. It requires some proof that losing what he contributed made things materially worse.
What the support actually looked like
This is worth setting out, because it is so ordinary:
- $300 a month in cash to the son’s mother, used toward the son’s regular expenses.
- Health insurance for the son through the father’s job at the drugstore.
- Clothes he bought for his son.
- Weekly visits.
- And a detail that says a great deal: he rented out a room in his apartment in order to help support his son.
Three hundred dollars a month is not a household budget. But it was consistent, it was real, and it was demonstrably being spent on the son’s needs. The father was giving up part of his own home to keep it going.
The health insurance is the quiet lesson
Families tallying up “support” tend to count cash and stop there. Coverage through the worker’s job is support too, and for a disabled adult child it is often worth far more than the cash ever was.
The same logic reaches other non-cash contributions — a car payment made directly, a phone line carried on a family plan, groceries, a utility bill in the worker’s name. If the worker was paying it and now nobody is, that belongs in the picture.
“A minimal standard”
The other reason this decision is useful is the standard of review, which the court stated bluntly: “Substantial evidence is a minimal standard and demands only that a given inference is reasonable and plausible, not necessarily the most probable.”
That is the rule that decides most appeals from the Board, and it explains why carriers lose so many of them. The appellate court is not asking whether it would have reached the same conclusion. It is asking whether the Board’s inference was reasonable.
It also explains where the real work happens. The testimony, the records, the witnesses — that all matters at the Board, while the record is being made. Our page on denied claims and appeals walks through the stages.
Adult children with disabilities
Death benefits for a child normally end at 18, or at 23 for a full-time student. A disabled child can qualify without that time limit, which is why a claim for a son in his late twenties was in front of the Board at all.
What was fought over here was not the disability. It was whether a son who lived with his mother, was cared for by a guardian, and received a few hundred dollars a month was really dependent on his father. The Board said yes and the court let that stand.
The mechanics of who receives what, and for how long, are on our death benefits page.
It was a COVID death
Worth noting in passing: the underlying claim was a March 2020 death from COVID-19 contracted at work, and it was established. Families who lost someone in that first wave sometimes assume the window closed or that such a claim was never viable. This one was litigated to the Appellate Division and the death benefit survived.
If you are trying to show dependency
- Write down the pattern, not just the total. How much, how often, for how long, and what it paid for.
- Count the non-cash support — insurance, bills paid directly, clothing, groceries.
- Find whatever traces exist. Bank records, transfers, insurance enrollment, texts arranging the handoff.
- Be specific about the effect. What stopped when the money stopped, and what had to be cut.
- Do not rule yourself out because you were not living with the worker or were not supported entirely.
- Expect to testify. The Board weighs credibility, and in this case it believed the family.
Talk to a New York workers’ compensation attorney
Death benefit cases arrive at the worst possible moment, and families routinely leave them alone because the paperwork feels impossible and the entitlement feels uncertain. The threshold is lower than most people assume.
Call (718) 701-2776. The consultation costs nothing, and you will speak with me.
We handle workers’ compensation claims for injured workers throughout the five boroughs and across New York State. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.
Nothing on this page is legal advice about your own claim. This post discusses a published appellate decision, and dependency is decided by the Board on the evidence in each record.
