Loss of consortium claims in Illinois: What spouses or family can recover
Wrongful Death - August 21, 2026
If your husband or wife was seriously hurt by someone else’s negligence, Illinois gives you a claim of your own. It’s called loss of consortium, and it covers the companionship, affection, guidance, and physical intimacy the injury took out of your marriage. The claim is yours, not your spouse’s.
Most people searching for loss of consortium settlement amounts want a number, so we’ll be straight with you: Illinois doesn’t have one. No average, no formula. What decides the value is who’s allowed to bring the claim and what a jury gets to hear about your marriage. A Chicago wrongful death lawyer or personal injury attorney at Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates can tell you whether you have a claim.
Who can file a loss of consortium claim in Illinois?
Only a spouse or civil union partner, and that relationship had to exist when the injury happened.
That second part surprises people, so it’s worth saying plainly. If you were engaged when your fiancĆ© got hurt and married a month later, Illinois won’t give you this claim. Courts have applied that rule even where the wedding was already booked.
Living together doesn’t count, no matter how many years it’s been, because Illinois stopped recognizing common law marriage back in 1905.
While your spouse is alive, their parents and children generally can’t bring a claim of their own for lost companionship. The Illinois Supreme Court declined to extend consortium that far in 1988 and confirmed it again in 2004, weighing how far liability ought to reach against the risk of paying twice for one injury. If you’ve read that a parent can file, that’s likely about a case where the child died.
How is loss of consortium different from a wrongful death claim?
The dividing line is whether the injury was fatal. If your spouse was hurt and survived, you may have a consortium claim of your own. If someone’s negligence caused a death, the claim runs through the Illinois Wrongful Death Act instead, and the estate’s personal representative brings it for the surviving spouse and next of kin rather than each relative filing separately.
That’s where parents come back in. When a child dies, a parent can recover for the loss of that child’s society, which is the same recovery Illinois won’t allow while the child is alive. Our page on wrongful death lawsuits in Illinois walks through how those claims work.
What does a loss of consortium claim look like in a real case?
Two claims come out of one accident, filed together and valued separately.
Picture a laborer on a West Loop high-rise who falls because a subcontractor left a floor opening unguarded. He survives with a spinal injury. His case asks for his medical bills, his lost wages, and what he goes through physically.
His wife’s case asks for something else entirely. She’s the one doing everything he used to do around the house, and living with a marriage that changed in ways no hospital bill shows. A jury is asked to put a number on her loss on its own, so that neither of them gets paid twice for the same thing.
Are there average loss of consortium settlement amounts in Illinois?
No. Illinois has no formula for this and no published average worth trusting. An appellate court here put it about as plainly as a court can: a damage award “is not subject to scientific computation.” Illinois courts have also generally declined to line one verdict up against another when deciding whether an award was too big.
You’ll see the multiplier method online, where someone adds up the medical bills and multiplies by a number from one to five. It won’t tell you much, because that number is an insurance adjuster’s rough shorthand for the injured person’s own pain, and your claim isn’t your spouse’s claim. Multiplying his bills doesn’t measure anything about what you lost.
Here’s a real number, and it comes from a court rather than a marketing page. In a 2004 Illinois appeal, a jury gave a husband $3.5 million for loss of consortium after his wife was catastrophically injured, and the appellate court refused to reduce it. One case, unusually severe facts. It won’t tell you what your marriage is worth.
What actually moves the number is evidence: how permanent the injury is, what your marriage looked like before and after, how much care you’re providing now, and how long you’ll be providing it.
What can reduce or block a loss of consortium claim?
Your claim is your own, but it leans on your spouse’s. Illinois calls it derivative, which here means that if his recovery gets reduced for his share of the fault, yours gets reduced right along with it.
Say a jury decides your husband was 20% responsible for the crash. His award drops by 20%, and so does yours. Put him over 50%, and neither of you recovers anything. Your claim also gets filed alongside his rather than on its own later, and your deadline is his deadline, which in most injury cases means two years.
Work injuries are where people tend to hear this stated too broadly. Workers’ compensation is generally the only claim against an employer, and that bar does reach your consortium claim against the employer too. It stops there, though. When someone other than the employer caused the injury- a subcontractor, a property owner, a driver, or an equipment manufacturer- workers’ compensation doesn’t bar your claim against that company.
Can your spouse settle without settling your claim?
Not automatically. Your claim belongs to you, and Illinois courts have held that a settlement of the injured spouse’s case doesn’t by itself wipe out the consortium claim.
What matters more in practice is how the money gets divided between the two claims. If a workers’ compensation lien is in play, the employer has a right to be paid back out of the injury recovery, and courts look hard at any split that quietly moves value onto the consortium side to shrink that lien. It’s a conversation to have before anyone signs, not after.
What does filing a consortium claim mean for your privacy?
The other side gets to ask about your marriage, and you should hear that from your own lawyer rather than find it out at a deposition.
Your claim is about companionship and intimacy, which makes both of those fair questions. Expect to be asked what your relationship was like before the injury and what it’s like now, including your physical relationship. Your attorney can shut down questions that reach further than the claim allows, but the subject itself is open once you file.
Some spouses decide the claim is worth that. Others decide it isn’t, and that’s a reasonable answer too. We’d rather you make that call ahead of time than be caught off guard by it.
Talk to a Chicago personal injury attorney about your own claim
Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates has represented injured people and their families in Cook County since 1924. When your husband or wife is badly hurt, your claim is a real part of the case, and it should be pleaded and proved like one.
We work on a contingency fee basis, and you pay no attorney’s fees unless compensation is recovered. Consultations are free. Call (800) 985-1819 or Contact us online.
