When someone dies because of another person’s negligence, most families understand they can pursue a wrongful death claim. What they don’t understand is how much they might actually be entitled to recover. The difference between what people think they can claim and what’s actually available can be staggering.
Insurance companies count on this confusion. They present settlement offers that sound substantial, and grieving families accept them without realizing they’re leaving significant compensation on the table. The money isn’t hidden because anyone’s trying to be secretive. It’s just that the legal categories for wrongful death damages don’t match up with how regular people think about loss.
Beyond the Obvious: Lost Income Isn’t Everything
Everyone knows that wrongful death claims include lost wages. If someone was earning $60,000 a year and would have worked another 20 years, that’s over a million dollars in lost income. Simple math, right?
Except it’s not that simple, and it’s definitely not the whole picture. Lost wages get calculated based on the person’s actual earning potential, which includes expected raises, bonuses, and career advancement. A 35-year-old who was on track for promotions has a very different calculation than someone at the end of their career. Then there’s the value of benefits like health insurance, retirement contributions, and stock options that many families forget to include.
But here’s what really catches people off guard. Even if the deceased person wasn’t working, there’s still economic loss. A stay-at-home parent provided services that have real monetary value. Childcare, cooking, cleaning, household management, transportation, even things such as yard work and home maintenance all cost money if someone else has to be paid to do them. Texas law recognizes this, but families often don’t think to claim it.
The Cost of Guidance That Never Happened
This one is harder to quantify, but it’s very real. When a parent dies, their children lose years of guidance and counsel. That’s compensable under Texas law, but most people don’t understand what it means in practical terms.
Think about all the things a parent helps with over time. College decisions, career choices, relationship advice, financial guidance, help buying a first home. A wrongful death lawyer will often work with economists and life care planners to put actual numbers on these intangible losses, but families rarely consider them on their own.
The same applies when an adult child loses a parent they relied on for advice, or when a spouse loses their partner’s counsel and support. These aren’t just emotional losses, though they’re certainly that too. They represent the value of experience and wisdom that’s now permanently absent from major life decisions.
Loss of Companionship Gets Seriously Undervalued
Insurance adjusters love to minimize this one. They’ll acknowledge it exists, sure, but then they’ll offer what amounts to pocket change compared to the economic damages. What they’re hoping is that families won’t push back because putting a dollar amount on companionship feels uncomfortable.
But the loss of companionship isn’t just about missing someone. It’s about the actual, daily impact of that absence. A spouse who loses their partner loses their closest confidant, their emotional support system, their co-parent, their companion for every major life event going forward. Children who lose a parent miss out on decades of relationship building, from high school graduations to weddings to grandchildren.
Texas law allows for substantial compensation for loss of companionship, but families need to understand that the first offer is almost never adequate. The value should reflect the depth and duration of the relationship, not just acknowledge that the relationship existed.
Mental Anguish Is Its Own Category
People often lump mental anguish in with loss of companionship, but they’re actually separate damages under Texas law. Mental anguish covers the emotional suffering caused by the death itself and the ongoing psychological impact of that loss.
This includes grief, obviously, but also anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and the trauma of how the death occurred. If family members witnessed the accident or saw their loved one suffer before death, that adds another layer of compensable mental anguish. If they had to identify the body or make difficult end-of-life medical decisions, that factors in too.
The problem is that mental anguish is subjective, which makes it easy for insurance companies to downplay. They’ll suggest that everyone grieves and that grief isn’t worth much financially. That’s nonsense, but it works if families don’t know better. Mental anguish damages can be substantial, especially in cases involving sudden traumatic death or prolonged suffering before death.
Funeral and Burial Costs Add Up Fast
This seems straightforward, but families consistently underestimate these expenses. A basic funeral in Texas runs $7,000 to $10,000, and that’s before adding things that most people want, such as a nicer casket, a burial plot, a headstone, or a reception.
If the family chose cremation thinking it would be cheaper, they might be surprised to learn it still costs several thousand dollars when you include the urn, a memorial service, and a final resting place for the ashes. And if the death occurred far from home, add transportation costs for the body and potentially for family members who had to travel.
These are recoverable damages, but they need to be documented. Families should keep every receipt related to funeral and burial expenses, including things that might not seem obviously related at first glance, such as flowers, programs, death certificates, and even grief counseling if it was needed immediately after the death.
The Medical Bills Between Injury and Death
When someone doesn’t die instantly but survives for hours, days, or weeks before passing away, there’s often significant medical expenses during that time. Emergency room treatment, surgery, ICU stays, medications, medical equipment, and end-of-life care all generate bills that can reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
These bills are part of what’s called a survival action, which is technically separate from the wrongful death claim but usually gets handled together. The survival action represents the deceased person’s own claim for what they went through between the injury and death, including their medical expenses and their pain and suffering during that time.
Some families assume that if the person had health insurance, these costs are covered and therefore not claimable. That’s not how it works. The at-fault party is responsible for medical expenses they caused, regardless of whether insurance paid them initially. In fact, health insurance companies often have a right to be reimbursed from any settlement or judgment, which is called subrogation.
Why Families Settle for Less Than They Should
The biggest reason families leave money on the table is timing. Wrongful death settlements often get negotiated within the first year after the death, when families are still in crisis mode. Bills are piling up, income has stopped, and there’s pressure to resolve everything quickly.
Insurance companies know this and take advantage. They make an offer that sounds reasonable, frame it as fair, and create urgency around accepting it. What they don’t do is break down all the categories of damages the family is entitled to or explain how much more the case might be worth with proper legal representation.
Another factor is discomfort with the whole process. Many families feel wrong asking for money after losing someone they loved. It feels transactional in a way that doesn’t match their grief. But compensation in wrongful death cases isn’t about putting a price on a person. It’s about holding someone accountable for the harm they caused and providing financial stability for the future the deceased would have wanted for their family.
Getting the Full Picture
Understanding what’s actually available in a wrongful death claim requires looking at both the obvious damages and the ones that aren’t immediately apparent. Economic losses extend beyond simple lost wages. Non-economic damages such as loss of companionship and mental anguish have real value that shouldn’t be minimized. And the full cost of someone’s death includes expenses and impacts that might not show up until months or years later.
Families dealing with wrongful death don’t need to become legal experts, but they do need to understand that the first explanation of damages they hear, especially from an insurance company, probably isn’t complete. The law recognizes that losing someone creates ripples that extend far into the future, and compensation should reflect that reality, not just the most obvious immediate costs.
