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Hi everybody. Matt Clendenin here. As the Covid lockdown continues, I feel like my hair is getting wilder and longer. I hope everyone else is doing okay. Both health, and being a little bit silly, but I hope your hairstyle is looking good at home. I want to share today about a part of personal injury cases that often gets overlooked and that is what's called a loss of consortium claim. Now, when someone gets an injury, especially if it's a more serious injury, we all know that spouses take a big burden too. From, you know, loss of intimacy to stress on a marriage to caretaking spouses deal with a lot when their loved one gets injured. California actually recognizes a separate lawsuit that a spouse can bring for the loss of their relationship, the loss of their loved one. That loss is a separate claim that can be brought. 

In some situations those cases can be extremely valuable and important too because the spouse needs to recover for what they've lost. So if their marriage has been forever destroyed by an injury to their spouse, their claim needs to be brought too. But that being said, there are some big reasons why you might choose not to bring a loss of consortium claim. And the first is that they can be really challenging. You know, when you say your marriage vows for better or for worse, a lot of jurors don't believe that a spouse should get paid money if their loved ones hurt. So they're challenging. Juries do not like them off the bat. Secondly, if the injury is relatively minor, it's not worth the challenge to bring a claim for a minor loss of consortium claim. So just because you got whiplash and had to go to physical therapy a few times a week, you know, just because you irritated your spouse a little bit and they had to give you a back rub that's not worth a loss of consortium claim, but you still have one, even though it's a small claim. 

So people need to be advised by their attorney that their spouse does have a claim. And if you choose not to bring a claim, a good lawyer will give you a written disclosure advising you that your spouse does have the claim, even if you choose not to bring it. A third reason that folks might choose not to bring their loss of consortium claim is that it involves a lot of very personal information because if you're asking for money for the loss of your relationship with your spouse. They're going to go into sexual intimacy, they're going to go into infidelity, they're going to go into how strong your marriage was before the crash and after the crash. It gets really brutal. So if folks don't want lawyers, and that includes, we have to ask you these questions to understand your case, but the other lawyer is going to ask you all those questions from the insurance company. So some folks just would rather have their privacy frankly, and they choose not to bring their loss of consortium claim.

 So, those are a couple of reasons why folks do not bring loss of consortium claims, but they still exist and they're an important part of a personal injury case. So please don't forget your spouse. They're part of your case too, and you need to meet with your lawyer and talk about whether or not bringing a consortium claim is appropriate in your case. 

Another key thing about loss of consortium claims is that a boyfriend, a girlfriend, even a permanent partner that lives with you, they are not eligible for loss of consortium claims. You have to be legally married or in a civil union. So unfortunately for boyfriends and girlfriends, the law does not cover your claim. So if anyone has any questions, especially if you have a case right now, but your lawyer has not talked to you about loss of consortium, please call me. Your spouse can still be represented independently, but that's a decision that you would have to make. 

So Matt Clendenin here, hopefully you know a little bit more about loss of consortium. That's just the fancy lawyer word for how your spouse is affected.