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September 2026

Protect Your Loss of Consortium Claim in Florida With F.S. §768.0415

Yes. If your spouse suffered a serious injury because of someone else’s negligence, Florida law lets you file your own claim for loss of consortium alongside their personal injury case. Your claim is derivative, meaning it depends on your spouse having a viable negligence case against the same defendant. In narrow situations involving a permanently disabled parent, an unmarried dependent child may also have a statutory remedy under F.S. §768.0415. Every award is non-economic, so it rises or falls on the evidence you gather.

TL;DR:

  • Loss of consortium claims depend on the success of the spouse’s negligence case against the same defendant, and they are barred if that claim fails or is dismissed.
  • Only married spouses or, in rare cases, dependent children of permanently injured parents may file these claims, with strict limits on relationship and legal standing.
  • Damages awarded are non-economic and focus on loss of companionship, household services, and emotional support, not medical expenses or lost wages.
  • Evidence needed includes detailed medical records, daily logs of household changes, photographs, witness statements, and expert testimony to support the qualitative loss.
  • Family members should begin documenting losses immediately, carefully review settlement releases, and consult an attorney early to preserve their claim rights before insurance companies settle or dismiss the case.
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Table of Contents

What Loss of Consortium Means Under Florida Law

Loss of consortium covers what a serious injury takes from a marriage, not what it costs financially. Florida’s foundational case, Gates v. Foley, defines it as the loss of companionship, society, affection, comfort, solace, and the marital relationship itself. The court didn’t limit it to lost intimacy. It recognized that a spouse who becomes a full-time caregiver, or who watches their partner’s personality and abilities change permanently, has suffered a real, compensable loss.

This differs from what happens in a wrongful death case, where survivor damages fall under F.S. §768.21 rather than a personal injury consortium claim. Gates v. Foley matters because it established, decades ago, that a spouse has an independent right to sue. Before that ruling, Florida courts treated consortium losses as invisible. Now they’re a recognized part of catastrophic injury litigation.

Who Can File: Spouses and Narrow Parental Claims

You must be legally married to the injured person at the time of the injury to bring a standard consortium claim in Florida. Engaged couples, long-term partners, and roommates generally can’t file one, no matter how significant the relationship or how real the loss.

There’s one narrow exception worth knowing about. Under F.S. §768.0415, an unmarried dependent child can seek damages when a parent suffers a significant permanent injury resulting in permanent total disability from someone’s negligence.

A few things to keep in mind about eligibility:

  • Your claim depends entirely on your spouse’s negligence case succeeding against the same defendant.
  • If your spouse’s underlying claim fails, gets dismissed, or is barred, your consortium claim typically fails with it.
  • Divorce or separation before the injury date usually ends eligibility, even if you remain close.
  • Common law marriage doesn’t count in Florida unless it was validly established in another state before 1968.

Damages Covered: What You Can and Can’t Recover

A consortium claim covers the relationship, not the medical bills. Florida juries can award compensation for loss of companionship, loss of intimacy, loss of household services (the cooking, driving, home repairs, and caregiving your spouse used to handle), and loss of guidance or protection in the household.

What it does not cover is anything already claimed by the injured spouse. Medical expenses, lost wages, and future earning capacity belong to the injured person’s own claim, not yours. Overlapping those categories is one of the fastest ways to weaken both cases in front of a jury.

There’s no fixed formula for calculating these awards in Florida. Jurors weigh several factors when deciding what a marriage lost:

  • How long the couple was married before the injury.
  • The severity of the injury and its permanence.
  • The medical prognosis and whether functional recovery is realistic.
  • The ages of both spouses and their life expectancy.
  • The quality and closeness of the marital relationship before the injury occurred.

Pro Tip: A jury that hears specific, concrete examples (“he used to coach our son’s baseball team every Saturday; now he can’t leave the house without help”) awards more consistently than one that hears vague descriptions of “hardship.”

Proving a Claim: Evidence Checklist for Families

Consortium claims live or die on documentation, because there’s no receipt for a lost marriage. You have to build the proof yourself, starting the day you realize the injury is serious.

  1. Gather complete medical records and treating physicians’ opinions that document permanent limitations, not just the initial diagnosis.
  2. Start a daily log describing specific changes: what your spouse used to do that they can’t do now, how often you help with basic tasks, and how your routines have shifted.
  3. Photograph the physical changes at home, from mobility equipment to modified bathrooms, and keep dated copies.
  4. Collect statements from friends, neighbors, and family members who’ve witnessed the household changes firsthand.
  5. Preserve therapy records and, where available, expert testimony on how the relationship’s day-to-day function has changed.

Requesting your spouse’s complete medical records early matters more than most families realize. Insurance adjusters look for gaps in documentation, and a thin record makes a consortium claim easy to dismiss as speculative.

Timing and Procedure: Deadlines and Settlement Risks

Your consortium claim generally follows the same statute of limitations as your spouse’s underlying negligence claim, though wrongful death cases run on a separate timeline under F.S. §768.21. Missing that window ends both claims.

Illustrated paths showing linked claim deadlines

Because your claim is derivative, it lives or dies with your spouse’s case. If their claim is reduced by comparative negligence or settled without protecting your interest, your recovery can shrink or disappear entirely.

Settlement releases deserve particular caution:

  • Insurance companies sometimes draft releases broadly enough to extinguish a spouse’s consortium claim without naming it directly.
  • Attorneys often insist that the spouse be named as a party to the lawsuit, or that release language explicitly preserve the consortium claim.
  • Never sign a release connected to your spouse’s injury case without independent legal review of what it does to your own rights.

Parental Consortium Under F.S. §768.0415: The Statute Most People Miss

Most families never hear about this statute until it’s too late to use it well. F.S. §768.0415 allows an unmarried dependent child to recover damages when a parent’s negligently caused injury results in permanent total disability. It’s been on the books since October 1988, yet it’s rarely litigated.

Part of the reason is definitional. The statute doesn’t spell out exactly what “permanent total disability” means, and legal scholars note that ambiguity has kept reported cases scarce.

A few practical points for families considering this route:

  • Courts tend to look for disability standards similar to those used in Social Security or workers’ compensation cases, so gathering that kind of medical evidence early strengthens the claim.
  • The injury must be both “significant” and result in total, permanent disability, a higher bar than ordinary consortium claims.
  • Because case law is thin, raising the statutory theory early and clearly, rather than as an afterthought, gives your attorney more room to build the record a court will expect.

How an Attorney Helps and What to Do Right Now

The single biggest mistake families make is waiting to get organized until the insurance company asks for a statement. By then, opportunities to preserve evidence often have quietly closed.

  1. Save every medical record and bill related to your spouse’s injury, even ones that seem redundant.
  2. Start documenting daily losses now, in writing, with dates.
  3. Don’t sign any settlement release before an attorney reviews how it affects your consortium claim.

An experienced attorney evaluates whether your consortium claim is viable, makes sure you’re named or protected in any settlement, brings in medical or vocational experts when needed, and takes the case to trial if the insurance company won’t offer fair value.

Pro Tip: Ask any attorney you consult how many consortium claims they’ve actually taken to verdict, not just settled. The willingness to try a case changes how insurance companies negotiate.

Many Florida injury firms handle these cases on contingency, meaning you pay nothing upfront and no fee unless you recover. An initial consultation typically costs you nothing and gives you a clear read on whether your claim has legs.

A Trial Lawyer’s Take on Consortium Claims

Jorge has spent years watching families underestimate what a loss of consortium claim requires, and overestimate how automatically it gets paid. It doesn’t. Insurance adjusters treat these claims as soft targets precisely because so few families document the loss the way they’d document a broken bone.

An experienced trial lawyer with a track record in serious injury and wrongful death litigation is important when a consortium claim needs more than a demand letter to get real value. The firm has handled cases where the injured spouse’s claim settled cleanly, but the consortium claim sat unresolved because nobody built the record early enough to support it. That’s avoidable, but only if families start documenting before the adjuster asks.

— Jorge

Get Help Protecting Your Consortium Claim in Florida

If your spouse suffered a catastrophic injury and your marriage has absorbed the fallout, Calillaw is the option built for exactly this situation, serious injury litigation handled by a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer who prepares every case as if it’s going to trial.

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Some Florida firms represent families on contingency, so you pay nothing upfront and nothing at all unless there’s a recovery. A free case evaluation can help determine whether your consortium claim is viable, whether your spouse’s underlying case is strong enough to support it, and what evidence you need to start collecting immediately. These firms often serve clients across Florida and are equipped to negotiate effectively or take a case to verdict when the insurance company won’t move. Visit the personal injury practice page to start a free consultation before any settlement release puts your claim at risk.

Primary Sources Worth Reading Directly

For the exact statutory language and holdings behind everything above, go to the primary sources:

This article is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified lawyer. Consult a qualified legal professional about your own circumstances before acting on anything here.

Sources

FAQ

What qualifies as loss of consortium in Florida?

It covers the loss of companionship, affection, household services, and the marital relationship caused by a spouse’s serious injury, as established in Gates v. Foley. It does not cover medical bills or lost wages, which belong to the injured spouse’s own claim.

What states recognize loss of consortium claims?

Florida is among the majority of states that recognize a spouse’s right to sue for loss of consortium, though the specific rules, evidence standards, and statutory exceptions like F.S. §768.0415 vary by state.

Is loss of consortium difficult to prove?

It can be, since there’s no fixed formula and the loss is entirely non-economic. Strong cases rely on detailed medical records, spousal testimony, contemporaneous documentation, and witness statements showing exactly how the relationship changed.

How much can you get for loss of consortium in Florida?

There’s no set amount. Florida juries weigh factors like the marriage’s duration, the injury’s severity and permanence, and the couple’s pre-injury relationship, and Calillaw can walk you through what similar documented cases have supported during a free consultation.

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