Mexico's Supreme Court Mandates UMA, Not Minimum Wage, for Death Indemnities

The ruling applies the 2016 desindexation reform to non-labor damages, setting a binding UMA benchmark that will lower typical payouts.

Overview

Mexico’s Supreme Court plenary, which voted Tuesday 6–3 after finding a split in prior rulings, adopted Minister Lenia Batres’s project to base civil death awards on the UMA.
The decision sets binding precedent for lower courts, which must now quantify death indemnities in UMAs rather than in minimum wages.
The UMA is a unit tied to inflation created to replace the wage as a legal yardstick, and its 2026 daily value of about 117.31 pesos is far below the 315.04 peso minimum wage.
IMSS told the Court that using the wage would have raised 2025 civil payouts by 146%, from 75,910 million to 187,057 million pesos.
Three ministers, including Loretta Ortiz, dissented over reduced reparations and noted insurer lobbying to keep UMAs, while supporters said Congress can still revise statutory amounts.