Enter your details to see results
Disclaimer: Household services awards require medical and often forensic-economic evidence; future losses must be discounted to present value. Educational estimate only — not legal advice.
US personal injury law compensates the lost ability to run your own household as a distinct element of economic damages. Forensic economists include 'loss of household services' in nearly every serious-injury damages report, valuing the injured person's reduced capacity to cook, clean, do laundry, maintain the home and yard, and care for children — at market replacement rates, whether or not anyone was actually hired. Despite this, unrepresented claimants and even some attorneys routinely leave it out, forfeiting five and sometimes six figures.
The accepted approach mirrors what forensic economists present at trial: establish pre-injury weekly hours by task (the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey shows US adults average roughly 15–24 hours of household work weekly); apply an impairment percentage supported by a physician's restrictions or an occupational therapist's functional capacity evaluation; multiply by market replacement rates — typically $18–$30 per hour for general housekeeping; and split the result into past loss (injury to settlement) and future loss (over the impairment duration, discounted to present value).
Before the crash you spent 6 hours/week cleaning, 5 cooking, 3 on laundry, and 4 on yard and home maintenance — 18 hours weekly. Your functional capacity evaluation supports a 40% impairment. At a $22/hour replacement rate, the loss is 18 × 40% × $22 = $158.40/week, about $8,237/year. Two and a half years post-injury, the past loss is roughly $20,600; ten further years of expected impairment adds a future claim of about $82,400 before discounting — a six-figure element that never appears in an insurer's opening offer.
If your injury has limited your household work for more than a few months, ask a personal injury attorney specifically whether loss of household services has been included in your demand. In serious cases, a forensic economist's report typically costs $2,500–$7,500 and can add many times that in settlement value. Contingency representation means no upfront cost.
Explore more free tools on our Personal Injury Calculators hub, walk through our interactive Personal Injury Wizards to understand your claim step by step, or contact LexScale.ai to build calculators like this for your own law firm website.
Enter your pre-injury weekly hours for each category of household work, the impairment percentage supported by your medical or occupational therapy evidence, and a market replacement rate. The tool computes the weekly and annual loss, then multiplies across the years since your injury (past loss) and your expected future years of impairment (future loss). Remember that a court awards future loss at present value — an economist applies a discount rate — so the future figure shown here is the undiscounted ceiling.
Be precise rather than generous with your hour estimates: an inflated claim that collapses under cross-examination damages your credibility on every other head of damages. A modest, well-corroborated housekeeping claim supported by a functional capacity evaluation almost always outperforms an ambitious unsupported one — and unlike wage loss, this claim exists whether you were employed, retired, or a full-time homemaker at the time of the injury.
Future Care Costs Calculator · Lost Wages Calculator · Pain and Suffering Calculator · PI Settlement Calculator · Contingency Fee Calculator
Need legal help with your claim?
Ready to grow your firm with AI?