Texas Wrongful Death Lawyers

The surviving spouse, children, and parents of the person who died. They may file individually or together as a group.

Siblings cannot bring a wrongful death claim in Texas, whether biological or adopted. If none of the eligible family members has filed within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the estate is generally required to file unless the family has asked them not to.

A wrongful death claim compensates the surviving family for their own losses — lost financial support and inheritance, lost companionship and services, and their mental anguish.

A survival action belongs to the estate and compensates for what the deceased person suffered before dying: their medical expenses, their conscious pain and suffering, and funeral and burial costs. Both can usually be brought together.

Financial support the person would have provided, the value of lost household services, loss of companionship and society, and the family's mental anguish. Through the survival action, the estate can also recover final medical bills and funeral expenses.

Where the death resulted from gross negligence, exemplary damages may also be available.

For the wrongful death claim, no — that claim belongs to the family members directly. For the survival action, the claim belongs to the estate, so a personal representative usually needs to be appointed.

It is a routine probate step and it is not a reason to delay speaking with an attorney.

The two proceedings are independent. A criminal prosecution punishes the defendant; the civil claim compensates your family, and it does not require a conviction to succeed.

The civil deadline runs on its own schedule and does not pause while a criminal case is pending, so the civil claim generally should not wait for it.

It happens more often than people expect, and Texas law contemplates it. Eligible family members can file individually rather than as a group, and settlement allocation among beneficiaries is handled as its own question.

Disagreement within a family is not a bar to bringing the claim.

Nothing up front. We work on a contingency fee, which means our fee is a percentage of what we recover for you and there is no fee at all if we do not recover anything.

The case review is free, and you are not obligated to hire us after it.

In most cases, two years from the date of the injury. Miss that window and the court will almost always dismiss the case regardless of its merits.

The exceptions matter in both directions: the clock is paused for a child until their 18th birthday, while a claim against a city, county, or state agency requires written notice far sooner — six months under state law, and as little as 45 or 90 days under some city charters. Because the deadline depends on who is at fault, it is worth confirming early.

You can still recover. Texas uses proportionate responsibility: as long as you are 50% or less at fault, you collect damages reduced by your share of the blame. At 51% you recover nothing.

That threshold is exactly why adjusters work so hard to pin blame on the injured person early. Fault is argued, not decided at the scene.