Houston Wrongful Death Lawyer

The Texas Wrongful Death Act (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Chapter 71) limits who may file. Only the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the person who died may bring the claim — individually or together. Adult children and adopted children are included, and parents may sue for the loss of an adult child. Siblings, grandparents, and other relatives — no matter how close — cannot bring a wrongful death claim under Texas law, a rule that surprises and hurts many families.

There is also a timing safeguard built into the statute: if none of the eligible family members files suit within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the estate may bring the claim on their behalf, unless every eligible family member asks that it not be filed. Families rarely need that provision when they have counsel early — but it exists because the Legislature understood how hard it is to think about lawsuits while grieving.

Texas law recognizes a second, separate claim that many families never hear about until they meet a lawyer. Under the survival statute (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.021), the personal injury claim your loved one could have brought if they had lived does not die with them — it survives and passes to their estate. The estate's representative brings it, and what it recovers becomes part of the estate, distributed under the will or Texas inheritance law.

The survival action compensates what the decedent themselves experienced and lost: the conscious pain and mental anguish they suffered between the injury and death, their medical expenses from the final injury, and funeral and burial costs. In cases where a loved one survived for hours, days, or weeks before passing, the survival claim can be substantial. A complete case usually asserts both claims together — the wrongful death claim for the family's losses and the survival claim for the decedent's own.

No verdict returns what was taken, and we will never talk about your loved one as a line item. But Texas law recognizes that the losses a family suffers are real and compensable. Economic damages include the financial support your loved one would have provided over a lifetime — earnings, benefits, the value of household services and care — and the loss of the inheritance the family would likely have received.

Non-economic damages address the harder truths: the loss of companionship and society — the daily presence, love, comfort, and counsel of a spouse, parent, or child — and the mental anguish the family endures. Texas juries may award these damages to each eligible family member individually, because a spouse's loss is not a child's loss, and neither is a parent's.

When a death results from gross negligence — a trucking company that ignored safety rules, a drunk driver, a property owner who knew and did nothing — Texas law also allows exemplary damages, meant not to compensate but to punish and deter. The Texas Constitution specifically preserves exemplary damages for gross-negligence deaths, a measure of how seriously the law treats them.

In most cases, Texas allows two years from the date of death to file a wrongful death lawsuit. Limited exceptions exist — for minor children, for example, or where the cause of death was not reasonably discoverable — but exceptions are never something to count on. Shorter notice deadlines can apply if a government entity is involved, sometimes just months. (This page is general information, not legal advice about your family's specific deadline.)

We tell every family the same thing, gently but honestly: the legal clock does not pause for grief, and neither does the evidence. Vehicles get scrapped, work sites change, camera footage is overwritten, and witnesses scatter — often within weeks. Hiring a lawyer early does not mean rushing into court. It means someone preserves the evidence, deals with the insurers, and handles the deadlines so your family doesn't have to carry that too.

From the first conversation, our role is to take the burden off your family. We investigate how the death happened — crash reports, safety records, witness accounts, physical evidence — and identify every responsible party and every insurance policy that applies. In many Houston cases that means looking past the obvious defendant: the trucking company behind the driver, the contractor behind the work site, the property owner behind the unsafe premises. We handle all contact with insurers, who often approach grieving families quickly with offers designed to close the claim before its true value is known. You should never have to negotiate your loss with an adjuster.

We prepare every wrongful death case as if it will be tried, because that is what moves insurers to pay full value, and we keep your family informed at the pace you choose — some families want every detail, others want to hear from us only when it matters. Either is right. The consultation is free, we are available 24/7, and there is no fee unless we recover for your family.