§ 139.002.Scope of Chapter

A one-sentence scope provision naming two categories.

The chapter applies only to a suit on a claim for damages arising from personal injury: (1) to an incapacitated person; or (2) in which the personal injury has resulted in the substantial disablement of the injured person.

Three limits are packed into that. It must be a suit, so the chapter does not reach a claim settled before filing. It must arise from personal injury, so property and economic claims are outside. And the claimant must fall in one of the two categories.

The categories capture the cases where a structured settlement matters most. A person who cannot work again, or cannot manage their own affairs, faces decades of expense that a lump sum may not survive.

A structure — periodic payments funded by an annuity, often with tax advantages — answers that, and the choice between structure and lump sum is consequential enough that the Legislature legislated about how the offer must be communicated.

"Substantial disablement" is the wider of the two categories, and it does not require any legal finding. Incapacity is a status determined under the Estates Code; substantial disablement is a question of fact about the injury.

Note what the chapter does not do. It does not require a structured settlement to be offered, does not regulate its terms, and does not favour it over a lump sum. It regulates only the transmission of an offer once made.

The periodic payments subchapter of the medical liability chapter is the related machinery for court-ordered structures.