What Is Loss Of Consortium In An Injury Case?
If you are injured in an accident, you actually may not be the only one injured. Your spouse may also be injured, even though he or she was never even in the accident. Your spouse’s injury is more indirect than yours. Your spouse has suffered through you, and through the loss of the relationship between the two of you.
Loss of Consortium – Physical and Mental
Anytime someone is injured in an accident, the spouse of the victim may have what is known as a loss of consortium claim. Loss of consortium recognizes that when victims are injured, they often are not the same person they were before the accident, and that can affect the victim’s spouse, who now also has a claim for the changes in the marriage caused by the victim’s injuries.
Physically, the victim may not be able to do the things they once did in the marriage. That can be holding children, helping raise the kids, having intimate relations with the spouse, playing sports together, going on trips, walking on the beach together—whatever two people do as a couple, they no longer can do (or can’t do it as well or as often). That loss has a value to it, which is recognized in a loss of consortium claim.
The marriage can also be affected by emotional changes. Injured victims are often not themselves, emotionally. They may have shorter tempers, have mood changes, or their personality may be altered. That may be as an effect of a physical injury, or because of an injury to the brain itself. Either way, the partner just “isn’t the same,” and the loss of the partner’s “old self” allows a spouse to recover for damages.
Do You Want to Make a Loss of Consortium Claim?
One thing couples need to consider is that a loss of consortium claim may often open the door to personal information about the couples’ marriage, before the accident.
For example, if you say that you only engage in sexual relations once a month because of your accident, the Defendant will want to know, and may have a right to know, how often you had relations before the accident. If you say you fight all the time and are in therapy after the accident, the Defendant will want to know if you went to therapy for any reason before the accident.
Some couples may be just fine with this, and willing to open details about their personal lives to the Defendant, in order to show that their marriage has been affected by the accident. Others may feel they would rather forego a loss of consortium, feeling it opens too much of their personal life to the Defendant. That is a personal choice, and one that you should have with your injury attorney.
We can help you understand the injuries that you can be compensated for in your case. Call the West Palm Beach personal injury attorneys at Pike & Lustig today.
Source:
forbes.com/advisor/legal/personal-injury/loss-of-consortium/
