Your spouse was the one hit by the truck. You were not in the car. California still gives you a lawsuit of your own, and it is not the same lawsuit as theirs.
Borna Houman Law is a personal injury firm in Los Angeles, and loss of consortium is the most misunderstood claim in California tort practice. Most people treat it as a line item inside the injured spouse’s settlement. It is a separate cause of action that belongs to you, with its own damages and its own deadline.
Key Takeaway: Loss of consortium in California is a separate cause of action owned by the uninjured spouse, not a damages category on the injured spouse’s case. Only a lawful spouse or registered domestic partner who was married before the injury can bring it. The deadline is two years under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, and that clock runs independently.
Why Can Your Spouse’s Settlement Erase Your Claim Without Your Signature?
Because the claim is derivative in proof but separately owned in law. Proving it requires showing that a third party tortiously injured your spouse. The claim itself is yours, which means your spouse cannot settle it for you and, more dangerous, your spouse’s lawsuit does not preserve it for you.
A spouse who is never named as a plaintiff in the complaint has not filed anything. The two-year clock keeps running on that unfiled claim while the injured spouse’s case moves through discovery, mediation, and trial setting. If the injured spouse settles in month 31 of a case filed at month 22, the consortium claim expired seven months earlier and nobody noticed.
The trap runs the other direction too. Insurers routinely send a global release naming both spouses and ask both to sign, even when the settlement money was calculated entirely on the injured spouse’s damages. Signing gives away a cause of action that was never valued, never negotiated, and never separately paid for.
In our experience representing families in serious injury cases, this is the most expensive procedural mistake available in a consortium case, and it stays invisible until it is permanent. The uninjured spouse gets named as a plaintiff in the same complaint, on the same timeline, and any release gets read for who is signing away what.
What Is a Loss of Consortium Claim in California?
Loss of consortium is the uninjured spouse’s claim for the damage a third party’s negligence did to the marriage itself. California recognized it in Rodriguez v. Bethlehem Steel Corp. (1974) 12 Cal.3d 382, which reversed roughly a century of contrary California law and made the claim available to both spouses rather than only the husband.
The loss being compensated is relational, not medical. Your spouse recovers for their broken spine. You recover for losing the partner you had before the crash.
These claims cluster in the most severe cases. Consortium is rarely worth pleading after a soft tissue neck strain, but it is close to standard in spinal cord injury cases, where the injury permanently changes how two people live together.
Who Can and Cannot Bring a Loss of Consortium Claim in California?
Only a lawful spouse or a registered domestic partner can bring the claim in California. Every other relationship is excluded, including several that most people assume are covered.
| Relationship to the injured person | Controlling authority | Can bring the claim? |
|---|---|---|
| Lawful spouse, married before the injury | Rodriguez v. Bethlehem Steel Corp. (1974) 12 Cal.3d 382 | Yes |
| Registered domestic partner, registered before the injury | Family Code section 297.5 | Yes |
| Spouse who married after the injury occurred | Marriage must predate the injury | No |
| Unmarried cohabiting partner, however long the relationship | Elden v. Sheldon (1988) 46 Cal.3d 267 | No |
| Engaged partner or fiance | Elden v. Sheldon (1988) 46 Cal.3d 267 | No |
| Child of an injured parent | Borer v. American Airlines (1977) 19 Cal.3d 441 | No |
| Parent of an injured child | Baxter v. Superior Court (1977) 19 Cal.3d 461 | No |
| Sibling, grandparent, or grandchild | No California authority recognizes the claim | No |
The two 1977 decisions catch nearly everyone off guard. A nine year old whose mother suffered a catastrophic traumatic brain injury and now needs full time care has no consortium claim of her own in California. Neither do the parents of a child burned in a preventable fire. The California Supreme Court drew the line at the marital relationship and has not moved it in almost fifty years, which is why pages promising family members a consortium recovery are wrong about California.
Does the Marriage Have to Exist Before the Injury?
Yes, and this requirement defeats a large share of otherwise sympathetic claims. The marriage or registered domestic partnership must be valid and in place on the date of the injury.
A couple who had been together nine years, engaged for two, and married four months after a motorcycle crash has no consortium claim. Elden v. Sheldon foreclosed the cohabitation argument, and the post-injury wedding does not cure it. The reasoning is that someone who marries an already injured partner accepted that condition rather than losing something they had.
Common law marriage does not help either, because California does not create common law marriages.
What Damages Does CACI 3920 Actually Cover?
The damages are entirely non-economic. CACI 3920, the Judicial Council instruction the jury actually receives, describes the loss in terms of the relationship rather than in dollars.
| Recoverable by the consortium plaintiff | Not recoverable by the consortium plaintiff |
|---|---|
| Loss of love, companionship, comfort, care, and society | The injured spouse’s medical bills |
| Loss of affection, protection, and moral support | The injured spouse’s lost wages or lost earning capacity |
| Loss of physical assistance in running the household | The consortium plaintiff’s own emotional distress at witnessing the accident, which is a separate claim entirely |
| Loss of sexual relations and the ability to have children together | Nursing and household services already paid for inside the injured spouse’s award |
That last exclusion is the double recovery rule, and defense counsel raises it routinely. If the injured spouse’s life care plan already funds a paid caregiver, the consortium plaintiff cannot bill the same care a second time as lost household services.
There is no formula. Juries are told to use their judgment, which is why the same marriage can be valued very differently by two panels in the same courthouse.
How Does the Injured Spouse’s Fault Reduce Your Claim?
Your recovery is reduced by your spouse’s percentage of fault, even though you did nothing wrong. California uses pure comparative negligence under Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, and the derivative nature of the consortium claim carries that reduction across to you.
The arithmetic is easy to run. A jury values the injured spouse’s damages at $2,000,000 and the consortium claim at $400,000, then assigns the injured spouse 30% of the fault for the collision. The injured spouse collects $1,400,000. The consortium plaintiff collects $280,000.
You absorbed a $120,000 reduction for conduct that was not yours. That is a reason to take the liability fight in the underlying case seriously even when you are not the one who was hurt.
Is There a Cap on Loss of Consortium Damages in California?
There is no cap in an ordinary personal injury case. California does not limit non-economic damages in negligence claims arising from car crashes, truck collisions, premises defects, or product failures.
Medical malpractice is the exception. Civil Code section 3333.2, rewritten by AB 35 effective January 2023, caps non-economic damages against health care providers, and consortium damages count against that same cap rather than receiving a separate one. The cap opened at $350,000 in injury cases and $500,000 where the patient died, then climbs on a fixed annual schedule for ten years before switching to 2% yearly increases.
Do not assume today’s number. The figure that governs is tied to your case, so confirm the applicable amount before valuing a medical malpractice claim that includes a spouse’s consortium loss.
Call (888) 42-BORNA for a free consultation. If your spouse was seriously hurt and nobody has told you that you may have your own claim, that conversation should happen before anyone signs a release.
What Is the Deadline to File a Loss of Consortium Claim?
Two years from the date of injury under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, and the clock runs on your claim independently of your spouse’s. Filing their complaint does not toll yours.
Government defendants compress that timeline hard. If a city bus, a county vehicle, a public hospital, or a Metro train caused the injury, Government Code section 911.2 requires a written claim within six months of accrual. The uninjured spouse must present their own claim. A claim form listing only the injured person does not preserve the consortium claim, and once the entity rejects it, Government Code section 945.6 gives you six months to sue.
| Defendant type | First deadline | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Private person or business | 2 years to file suit | Code Civ. Proc. section 335.1 |
| Public entity (city, county, transit agency, public hospital) | 6 months to present a written claim | Gov. Code section 911.2 |
| Public entity, after the claim is rejected | 6 months to file suit | Gov. Code section 945.6 |
| Health care provider (medical malpractice) | 1 year from discovery, 3 years maximum | Code Civ. Proc. section 340.5 |
These deadlines interact in ways that are easy to get wrong, and our breakdown of the California personal injury statute of limitations walks through the tolling rules that can move them.
What Does Pleading Consortium Expose About Your Marriage?
It puts your marriage into evidence. Once you claim that a third party damaged your marital relationship, the condition of that relationship becomes a legitimate subject of discovery.
In practice, the defense deposes you. You will be asked about your sexual relationship before and after the injury, about prior separations, about counseling, about how the household ran.
California’s constitutional privacy protection still applies, and courts do limit fishing expeditions into marital intimacy. The protection narrows the inquiry rather than eliminating it.
The most common mistake we see is a spouse agreeing to plead consortium without being told any of this, then feeling ambushed at deposition. In a catastrophic injury claim where the consortium loss is genuine and substantial, the trade is usually worth making. In a moderate injury case where the marriage is already strained, sometimes it is not, and that is a legitimate strategic choice rather than a concession.
How Is Loss of Consortium Different From Wrongful Death?
Loss of consortium exists while the injured spouse is alive. Wrongful death exists because they died. The two claims do not run at the same time for the same loss.
Wrongful death is governed by Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60, which sets out who has standing, and that list is broader than the consortium list. A surviving spouse, domestic partner, and children can all sue for wrongful death, and certain dependent parents and stepchildren may qualify. The children shut out of a consortium claim under Borer become proper wrongful death plaintiffs the moment the parent dies.
The consequence for a family is stark. A spouse who survives with catastrophic injuries produces one consortium plaintiff. The same event producing a death opens standing to the whole statutory class. If your spouse died, the correct analysis is a wrongful death claim in Los Angeles, not a consortium claim.
How Do You Actually Prove a Consortium Claim?
You prove it with specifics about daily life, not adjectives about love. Juries respond to concrete before and after evidence, and generic testimony about a close marriage moves nothing.
The evidence that works is ordinary and documented. Who drove the kids to school before, and who does now. Which of you handled the finances, the cooking, the yard. Photographs and video from the two years before the injury, put next to the present. Testimony from adult children, neighbors, and friends who watched the household change.
Medical and psychological records matter here too. Cases involving severe burn injuries show this clearly, where disfigurement, chronic pain, and long reconstruction schedules alter intimacy and caregiving in ways the records already capture.
In our experience representing spouses in these cases, the strongest consortium testimony is unemotional and factual. The spouse who calmly describes bathing an adult partner every morning is more persuasive than the one who insists the marriage was perfect.
Frequently Asked Questions About Loss of Consortium in California
How much can you get for loss of consortium in California?
There is no set amount and no multiplier, because California juries assign consortium damages using their own judgment with no statutory formula. Awards track the severity and permanence of the underlying injury, so a case involving permanent paralysis values very differently from one involving a healed fracture. Any firm quoting an average settlement figure is guessing.
Is loss of consortium difficult to prove?
It is difficult to prove well, though the legal elements are straightforward. The hard part is presenting intimate marital detail persuasively to strangers while surviving cross examination on the same subject. Cases fail more often on thin, generic evidence about the relationship than on the law.
What qualifies as loss of consortium?
A valid marriage or registered domestic partnership that existed before the injury, a tortious injury to your spouse caused by someone else, and a real loss of companionship, support, or intimacy as a result. All three must be present. The injury generally needs to be serious and lasting, because minor injuries rarely support the claim.
What are some examples of loss of consortium?
A spouse who becomes a full time caregiver instead of a partner, a couple who can no longer have sexual relations or conceive children, and a household where the injured spouse can no longer share parenting, cooking, or physical work. Loss of the ability to travel, socialize, or share activities together also counts. The common thread is a documented change in how two people live together.
What types of compensation can be claimed for loss of consortium?
Only non-economic damages: companionship, affection, comfort, moral support, household services, and sexual relations, as described in CACI 3920. The consortium plaintiff cannot recover the injured spouse’s medical bills or lost wages, which belong to the injured spouse’s own claim. Services already compensated inside the injured spouse’s award cannot be claimed twice.
Does a loss of consortium claim get its own insurance policy limit?
Usually not. Because the consortium claim is treated as derivative for insurance purposes, it generally falls inside the same per person limit as the injured spouse’s claim rather than opening a second one. That makes total available coverage a central question early in the case and often pushes the search toward additional policies and defendants.
Can a registered domestic partner file a loss of consortium claim?
Yes. Family Code section 297.5 gives registered domestic partners the same rights and obligations as spouses under California law, which includes the consortium claim. The registration must have been in place before the injury, exactly as a marriage must be.
Talk to a Los Angeles Injury Lawyer About Your Own Claim
If your husband, wife, or registered domestic partner was seriously hurt by someone else in LA County, you may have a claim that nobody has told you about. It has its own deadline, and it can be signed away in a release you were handed as a formality.
Borna Houman Law handles serious injury and catastrophic injury cases across Los Angeles County, and we make sure the uninjured spouse is named and valued rather than treated as an afterthought. You pay nothing unless we recover for you. Call (888) 42-BORNA for a free consultation.
This article is for informational purposes only. This is not legal advice. Consult an attorney about your specific situation. Every case is different, and no result is ever guaranteed.