When a serious accident occurs, the person who was physically hurt is not the only one who suffers because the entire family often feels the ripple effects of that trauma. In New York, if your husband or wife was badly hurt or lost their life because of someone else’s carelessness, you may be allowed to ask for payment for the loss of companionship and help that you have experienced.
These legal damages are meant to recognize that a marriage is a partnership and when one partner is disabled, the other partner loses a great deal of the value that the relationship once provided. If you are experiencing this type of hardship right now, talking to a lawyer can help you understand how to hold the responsible party accountable for the damage they have done to your home life and your future.
At The Silbowitz Firm in New York City, Mitchell Silbowitz has spent over three decades helping people who are going through these overwhelming circumstances. Since 1989, he has successfully handled more than 1,000 cases for individuals across New York City, Long Island, and other counties across New York State who have been hurt in car crashes, falls, and construction accidents.
Common Types of Hardship
Losing the help your spouse provided around the house is a major part of these claims because married couples usually split up the work required to keep a home running smoothly.
Loss of Services – When a spouse can no longer handle repairs, shovel snow, buy groceries, or take care of the laundry and cleaning, the other spouse has to take on all those extra tasks by themselves. This also includes the care of children, which becomes much harder when one parent is dealing with a severe injury and cannot help with the daily needs of the kids. In these situations, the extra work you are doing is a real loss that the law recognizes.
Loss of Support – If your spouse was a primary earner and their injuries are so bad that they can no longer go to work, your family is going to face a loss of financial support. This loss of income can make it impossible to pay the mortgage or keep up with bills, and seeking damages for this loss helps to replace the money that your spouse would have brought home if they had never been hurt.
Intimate Relations – A physical injury often changes the private side of a marriage as well. When a serious accident leads to a loss of physical desire or the ability to have an intimate relationship, the non-injured spouse is losing an important part of their marriage. This has long been a reason why people are allowed to seek these types of damages in court.
Loss of Companionship – Beyond just the work and the money, a marriage is about being together and doing things as a couple. If your spouse can no longer go for a walk with you in the evening or join you for your favorite hobbies and trips, you have experienced a loss of companionship. The quiet moments and the shared activities that make a relationship special are gone or changed forever, and that is something that a jury can consider when deciding on a case.
How Compensation is Calculated
There is no simple calculator for these cases, so a jury has to look at the facts and decide what is fair based on a few different things. They will look at how much money the injured spouse contributed to the family before the accident and what kind of work they did around the house to keep things organized.
They will also think about how long the recovery is going to take or, if the spouse passed away, what their normal life expectancy would have been. Most importantly, they will look at how the marriage has changed from a happy and active partnership to one where one person is now a caregiver for the other.
Who Can File for Loss of Consortium?
In most cases, you must have been legally married to the person who was hurt at the exact time the accident happened to file this kind of claim. People often forget about the spouse who was not physically at the scene of the accident, but that person is often the one who ends up carrying the heaviest burden of care and responsibility afterward.
It is also important to remember that this is a derivative claim, which is a legal way of saying that your case depends entirely on your spouse winning their own personal injury case. If their case is not successful, your claim for the loss of marital benefits will likely not move forward either.
Time Limits for Filing a Loss of Consortium Claim
You do not have forever to start a lawsuit, as New York has strict rules about when you must file your papers. Generally, you have three years to start a case for a personal injury, but if your spouse passed away, that time is cut down to only two years for a wrongful death claim. There are other rules that might make these times even shorter, depending on who caused the accident, such as a government agency or a doctor, so it is best to speak with someone who knows the law as soon as you are able to.
Get Legal Help With Mitchell Silbowitz Today
If your family is going through the aftermath of a terrible accident caused by a person or a company’s neglect, you deserve to have someone fighting for you. Mitchell Silbowitz has been standing up for injury victims since 1989 and has helped people win more than 1,000 cases in New York City, Long Island, and other counties across the state.
We have seen how car accidents, slip and falls, and construction site accidents tear families apart, and we are here to help you get the money you need to put your life back together. Call The Silbowitz Firm today at (646) 419-5344 to talk about your situation and find out how we can help you and your spouse through this difficult time.