We pay the most attention to the person who gets hurt. But one person's injury ripples through the whole family.

Injuries change the family dynamic. It’s not always as dramatic as going from partners to provider and patient. But it affects quality of life and provides an unwelcome reminder of what happened.

Thinking about how a person we love got hurt takes a toll. Especially when we know that it was preventable. If someone had just slowed down or paid better attention.

It’s a form of secondary trauma. Like an echo of the original harm.

Anxiety, irritability, disrupted sleep, difficulty concentrating and intrusive thoughts (often about the imagined but not witnessed injury) are common.

Washington law allows both injured people and their spouses, domestic partners, parents and children to make claims.

• A spouse or domestic partner can recover for loss of “consortium.” Consortium includes the fellowship, company, cooperation and aid of the other spouse. It includes emotional support, love, affection, care, services, companionship, including sexual companionship, and assistance.

• A child can recover for the loss of the love, care, companionship, and guidance of a parent.

• And a parent can recover for the “loss of love and injury to or the destruction of the parent-child relationship.” This includes the grief, mental anguish, and suffering as a result of the child’s injury. Parents can also recover for the loss of emotional support of the child as well as the loss of companionship of the child.

One of the really interesting aspects of the claims for me is the “loss of love.” Frequently defense attorneys ask: “Do you love your husband any less? Does he love you any less?” The answers are always “no.”

But it’s not really the “right” question. What we’re really talking about is the amount of love the family member has and will receive since the injury.

Think about it this way: If a family member is hit by a drunk driver and goes into a coma, do you love them less? Of course not. But are they capable of giving you love like they did before their injury? Definitely not.

And that’s true any time someone is injured. It doesn’t have to be a coma. Any time someone is in pain, they can’t give you the same amount of love they could if they were operating at 100 percent. There has been a loss because of someone else’s negligence and that loss of love needs to be recognized to balance the books.

Should these claims be brought to every case? No. Instead, the family member can testify about what has been lost. It hits differently when they give this testimony without a financial stake in the case and, I think, produces a bigger settlement or verdict through omission than inclusion. But every case is different and it’s something to think about in each one.