Under North Carolina law, siblings generally cannot file a wrongful death claim on their own. Instead, only the personal representative of the deceased person’s estate has the authority to file a wrongful death lawsuit under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 28A-18-2.
If a sibling serves as the court-appointed personal representative or executor of the estate, that individual may file the wrongful death action on behalf of the estate. Whether siblings ultimately share in a financial recovery depends on North Carolina’s intestate succession laws and the deceased person’s surviving relatives because such proceeds are not standard estate assets. The distribution of recovered funds follows state law, rather than simply who filed the lawsuit.