Losing someone you love is devastating on its own. When their death was caused by someone else’s carelessness – a distracted driver, a drunk driver, a negligent company – the grief comes wrapped in something harder to carry: it didn’t have to happen. Nothing can undo that. But Texas law does give your family a way to hold the responsible party accountable and recover the support you’ve lost.
At Blass Law, we carry the legal fight so you can focus on your family. Founding attorney Jay Blass Cohen has spent his whole career on the side of people – never the government, never the insurance company – and we’ve recovered millions for injured and grieving Texans. When you’re ready, call (713) 664-4000 for a free, confidential conversation. No pressure, no cost, just straight answers.
What Counts as a Wrongful Death in Texas?
In plain terms, a wrongful death is a death caused by someone else’s “wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default” – the language Texas law uses. A claim can be brought against a person, a group of people, a company, a business owner, or other entities named in the statute. The simplest way to think about it: if your loved one could have sued for their injuries had they survived, your family generally has the right to bring a wrongful death claim.
Who Can File a Wrongful Death Claim in Texas?
Texas limits who can bring a wrongful death claim to the people closest to the person who died:
- The surviving spouse
- The surviving children – including adult children
- The surviving parents
- Parents of a lost unborn child
Any of them can file on their own, or one can file on behalf of everyone. If none of them files within three months of the death, the personal representative of the estate can step in. One hard truth worth knowing up front: Texas does not let siblings bring a wrongful death claim, even though some states do.
Wrongful Death vs. a Survival Claim – What’s the Difference?
This trips up a lot of families, so let’s make it simple. After a preventable death, Texas actually recognizes two separate claims – and you can often pursue both at once:
- The wrongful death claim (Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 71.002) belongs to the surviving spouse, children, and parents. It compensates them for their own losses – lost financial support, lost companionship and guidance, and their mental anguish.
- The survival claim (§ 71.021) belongs to your loved one’s estate. It recovers what they went through between the injury and their passing – their medical bills, their conscious pain and suffering, and funeral and burial costs.
Together, these two claims tell the full story of what was taken – from your family and from the person you lost. We pursue both, so nothing gets left on the table.
What Kinds of Cases Become Wrongful Death Claims?
Almost any fatal accident caused by negligence can become a wrongful death claim. Some of the most common:
- Car and truck accidents – still one of the leading causes of wrongful death in Texas, especially on our busy Houston highways.
- Drunk driving crashes – impaired drivers are behind a large share of Texas traffic deaths every year. (When a drunk driver kills someone, the usual cap on punitive damages can even come off – more on that below.)
- Motorcycle and pedestrian accidents
- Dog attacks
- Slip-and-fall and other premises accidents, when a property owner ignores a known danger
- Workplace accidents, including trucking and maritime jobs
- Medical malpractice, which often takes investigation to uncover
- Criminal acts like homicide or assault – and here’s the important part: because a civil case has a lower burden of proof, you can hold someone financially responsible even if they were acquitted in criminal court.
How We Prove a Wrongful Death Case
The building blocks are the same four elements your loved one would have had to prove in an injury case – we just carry that fight for them:
- Duty: the at-fault party owed your loved one a duty of care (every driver, for instance, owes others the duty to drive safely).
- Breach: they broke that duty – speeding, driving drunk, texting, cutting a corner on safety.
- Causation: that breach is what actually caused the death.
- Damages: in a wrongful death case, the harm is presumed, because your loved one died.
Proving all of this takes evidence – police reports, records, expert analysis, witnesses – and moving fast to preserve it before it disappears. That’s our job, and we do the heavy lifting.
What Your Family Can Recover
No settlement can replace the person you lost. What it can do is lift the financial weight, so grief isn’t compounded by money worries. Under Texas law, your family may recover:
- Medical bills from your loved one’s final injury
- Lost earning capacity – the income and support they would have provided
- Loss of the household services they handled
- Funeral and burial expenses
- Loss of inheritance – what they’d likely have saved and passed on
- Loss of love, companionship, comfort, and guidance
- Mental anguish and pain and suffering
- Punitive damages, when the conduct was especially reckless
That last one matters in drunk driving deaths. Texas usually caps punitive damages (Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 41.008), but the cap comes off when the death was caused by intoxication manslaughter (Penal Code § 49.08) – so families in those cases can pursue more.
You Have Two Years – But Don’t Wait
In Texas, a wrongful death claim generally must be filed within two years of the date of death (Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003). There are a few exceptions – children who were under 18 when a parent died have until two years after their 18th birthday, and in some cases, like medical malpractice, the clock may start when the negligence is discovered. But those exceptions are narrow, and evidence fades fast. The sooner we can start, the better we can protect your family’s case.
Talk to a Houston Wrongful Death Lawyer
You shouldn’t have to carry both the grief and the fight. If someone else’s negligence took your loved one, let our compassionate, straight-shooting Houston wrongful death team stand with your family. Call Blass Law at (713) 664-4000 or request a case evaluation online. It’s free, confidential, and there’s no obligation – just a conversation about what comes next. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
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Related Personal Injury Practice Areas
- Houston Personal Injury Lawyer (Overview)
- Car Accident Lawyer
- Truck Accident Lawyer
- Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer
- Rideshare, Lyft & Uber Accident Lawyer
- Maritime & Admiralty Accident Lawyer
- Premises Liability Lawyer
- Medical Malpractice Lawyer
- Product Liability Lawyer
- Bicycle Accident Lawyer
- Catastrophic Injury Lawyer
- Burn Injury Lawyer
- Construction and Workplace Injury Lawyer
- Settlements & Verdicts
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Reviewed by Jay Blass Cohen, founder of Blass Law PLLC — ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist, certified Drug Recognition Expert, and SFST instructor, serving Houston since 2009. This article is general information, not legal advice for your situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.