Household Services Cost and Fee Structure

Documentation, above all. When records of the household and of the person's pre-injury tasks exist, quantification is a matter of reading them; when they do not, an interview with the individual and family has to reconstruct the prior division of household labor. A household with dependents adds tasks and hours to value, replacement-cost data has to be matched to the jurisdiction, and present-value coordination with an economist adds a phase.

Hourly, in two kinds of hours: the vocational work that identifies the tasks and counts the hours (records review, the interview and the quantification) and the economic work that prices them at replacement-cost wages and, when the case needs it, reduces them to present value. The retainer is drawn first against the review and the interview, and the same method serves plaintiff and defense counsel.

Yes, and the estimate turns mostly on whether an interview will be needed, so say what the records cover. Send the records that describe the household and the functional impact of the injury, whatever documents the person's pre-injury household activity, a note of whether the individual and family are available for an interview, and the life care plan if one exists, so care hours can be reconciled.

Yes, charged as expert testimony is charged, hourly preparation plus the deposition or trial rate. What is particular to a household services opinion is that it is often examined beside the economist's present-value figures, so the preparation covers where the hours came from (records or the interview), the reductions applied and the wage data, coordinated with the economist where both testify.

Yes. The case-specific loss is narrower than the gross household production a demographic average describes: it is the tasks this person actually performed, the share of each task now lost net of residual capacity, and the period the medical evidence supports. Each of those facts has to come from records or an interview, and the analysis costs more when the interview has to supply what the records do not.

It adds a phase when the case needs present value. The household services report quantifies the affected tasks and hours and applies replacement-cost wage data for the tasks and area; converting the annual figure into a present value over the supported horizon is forensic economics work, coordinated inside the engagement when required. The two discipline leads, the Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer and the Chief of Rehabilitation Services, share responsibility for the analysis.