§ 16.001.Effect of Disability

Limitations periods assume the person who was wronged can do something about it. Section 16.001 accounts for the people who cannot. If someone is under 18 or of unsound mind at the moment a claim arises, the clock does not run while that condition lasts.

The section is precise about timing, and the precision cuts against claimants. The disability has to exist when the cause of action accrues. A condition that develops later — an adult who becomes incapacitated a year into the limitations period — does not suspend anything. Subsection (d) says so directly.

Nor can disabilities be chained together. A minor who reaches 18 and is then adjudged of unsound mind cannot add the second period to the first. Subsection (c) forbids tacking outright, so the clock starts when the original disability ends.

Note that being married does not end minority for this purpose. The section says a person under 18 is under a legal disability regardless of whether the person is married, which removes an argument that once had some force.

The tolling is for the person, not the claim. Where a parent has their own cause of action arising from an injury to a child — for medical expenses, say — that claim belongs to the parent, who is under no disability, and runs on the ordinary clock while the child’s does not.

The section opens with "for the purposes of this subchapter", so it governs the general limitations periods in Subchapter A. The adverse possession subchapter carries its own disability provision, drawn differently, and specialised statutes elsewhere may displace this one — the medical liability chapter is the significant example, and it limits minority tolling sharply.

"Unsound mind" is not defined here. It has been understood to mean an inability to manage one’s affairs or to understand one’s legal rights well enough to pursue them — a functional test, not a diagnosis, and one the claimant must establish.