What are maintenance and cure, and what if the company shortchanges them?

The oldest employee benefit in American law

Centuries before workers' compensation existed, admiralty law required shipowners to care for seamen hurt or taken ill in the service of the vessel, and the duty survives intact: maintenance, a daily allowance standing in for the room and board of the ship; cure, payment of medical care until the seaman reaches maximum medical improvement; and unearned wages through the end of the voyage or employment period. No negligence is required, the injury need only arise while in service of the vessel, the duty cannot be signed away, and the courts resolve ambiguities in the seaman's favor, a tilt written into the law because of exactly how these disputes tend to go.

Where companies squeeze, and how each squeeze is answered

The pressure arrives in predictable forms. Maintenance gets set at a token daily rate no one could live on; the answer is proof, rent, utilities, food, of your actual reasonable living costs, which is why keeping those receipts is a case task from day one. Cure gets cut off early, with a company-chosen doctor declaring maximum improvement while your own physicians are still operating; the answer is that MMI is a genuine medical question, contested with treating-physician evidence, and reaching it ends cure, not your Jones Act case. And payments simply slow until financial pressure does the negotiating; the answer is that the law treats willful, arbitrary refusal to pay maintenance and cure as a wrong of its own, exposing the company to damages beyond the benefits, including punitive exposure the Supreme Court has preserved for exactly this misconduct.

The honesty rule that protects your claim

One defense deserves its own warning: a company can escape maintenance and cure by proving the seaman intentionally concealed a material medical condition on a pre-employment questionnaire that connects to the current injury. The lesson runs in both directions. Fill out every employment medical form completely and truthfully, and if the company is invoking prior-condition concealment against you now, do not accept the denial at face value, the defense has elements, all of them contestable, and it is raised far more often than it is proven.

Maintenance and cure runs beside your real case

These benefits keep the lights on; they do not compensate the injury. That is the work of the Jones Act negligence claim and the unseaworthiness doctrine, which run in parallel and are covered on their own page. What matters here: document everything, treat with physicians you trust, and get maritime counsel involved the moment payments are shorted or cut, because the company's adjusters navigate these waters daily and you should not sail them alone. The consultation at Silver Key Law is free.

Injured in Arizona? Some rules on this page are Texas-specific. Arizona differs on points that change outcomes, including pure comparative fault and government-claim deadlines. See our Arizona answers or call (888) 508-6967.

Related: Jones Act & Offshore Injuries · Maritime Injuries · Submit Your Case · All Common Questions

This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes depend on facts; talk to a lawyer about yours.