§ 72.002.Limitation Not Applicable

The provision that confines the Texas guest statute to family.

There is no limitation under this subchapter on the liability of an owner or operator who is not related to the guest within the second degree by consanguinity or affinity.

So the guest statute reaches relatives only. A passenger who is not a close relation of the driver sues on ordinary negligence, with none of the heightened standard the preceding section imposes.

The second degree is a narrow circle. By blood it reaches parents, children, siblings, grandparents, and grandchildren; by marriage it reaches the equivalent in-laws and a spouse. A cousin, an aunt, a friend, a colleague, a neighbour — all outside.

The history explains the shape. Guest statutes were enacted across the United States to address collusive claims: a passenger and driver who are family, insured by the same carrier, have little incentive to contest the passenger’s claim. Most states repealed theirs; Texas narrowed its to the relationships where that concern arises.

Consanguinity is blood relationship and affinity is relationship by marriage, both computed under the degrees-of-relationship rules in the Government Code, which is where the counting is done.

Note the effect of a divorce or a death on an affinity relationship, which those rules address — relationship by affinity generally ends when the marriage does, unless a child of the marriage is living.

Read with the preceding section, the pair produce a simple rule: a family passenger faces a higher standard, and everyone else does not.