"Does my family get anything?"

What workers' compensation does not provide

No loss of consortium. Your spouse has no claim for the loss of your companionship, society, or relationship. This is one of the clearest limits of the system, and it surprises people badly in serious cases.

No compensation to family for their own distress.

No pain and suffering — not for you, and not for them.

The one thing it does provide

A family member who provides your care can be paid.

Home health care is medical treatment under Labor Code § 4600(h), and it can be provided by a spouse, a parent, or an adult child.

But two requirements control, and one of them is brutal:

It must be prescribed — "prescribed by a physician and surgeon licensed pursuant to Chapter 5."

And: "The employer is not liable for home health care services that are provided more than 14 days prior to the date of the employer's receipt of the physician's prescription."

Fourteen days. A family that provides eight months of care before anyone gets a prescription has, by statute, given nearly all of it away — and the clock runs from when the employer received it, so proof of transmission matters as much as the prescription.

If someone is caring for you at home right now and there is no prescription on file, that is the most urgent thing on this page. More on catastrophic claims.

Related benefits that go under-claimed: home modification — ramps, widened doorways, roll-in showers, lifts — and vehicle modification, both within the medical treatment obligation where reasonably required.

Where the family's real claim lives

In a third-party case.

If anyone other than your employer contributed to your injury — a driver, a property owner, a general contractor, an equipment manufacturer — there is a civil claim, and a spouse has a separate cause of action for loss of consortium.

In a catastrophic injury, that component is frequently one of the largest in the case, and it does not exist anywhere in workers' compensation. How third-party claims and liens work.

And if the worker dies

California death benefits are $250,000 for one total dependent, $290,000 for two, and $320,000 for three or more, plus $10,000 in burial expenses — paid in installments at the temporary disability rate, not less than $224 per week.

And payments to totally dependent minors continue until the youngest turns 18, past the face amount — for life where a dependent child is incapacitated from earning.

The deadline is the danger. § 5406(b) bars proceedings more than one year after the date of death, nor more than 240 weeks from the date of injury — and in an occupational disease death that outer limit can expire before the death. The 240 weeks is not absolute — § 5406(a) excepts §§ 5406.5, 5406.6 and 5406.7, and § 5406.7 reaches 420 weeks for a death from a § 3212.1 cancer, § 3212.6 tuberculosis or § 3212.8 blood-borne infectious disease.

How death benefits work.