Claire Tate Rehmet

Claire Tate Rehmet has spent her career on one side of the fight: the injured person’s. She represents people across the Dallas-Fort Worth area who were hurt by someone else’s carelessness, and her job is to pull fair compensation out of insurance companies that would rather pay less.

At Tate Law Offices, PC, Claire handles serious injury claims with a mix of compassion for her clients and a hard edge toward the insurers on the other side. She knows most people who call her have never dealt with an injury claim before, and she treats that first conversation as the start of a relationship, not a transaction.

What Drives Claire’s Work

Claire will tell you plainly what keeps her in this work. “I have a lot of compassion for people who have been injured due to the negligent actions of others, and it is a privilege for me to go to work every day and fight for the rights of the injured,” she says.

That compassion is not soft. It shows up as attention to detail, steady communication, and a refusal to let an insurance company treat a real person as a line item. Claire keeps her clients informed and keeps their claims moving, because a hurt family should not also have to chase their own lawyer for answers.

The Discipline of a Former Athlete

Before law, Claire competed. She earned a statewide tennis ranking that placed her among the 10 highest-ranked players in Texas, then played collegiate tennis for Texas Christian University.

That background is not just a fun fact. Claire also finished a seven-year undergraduate and graduate program in five years, which is the kind of thing that only happens through relentless preparation. She brings the same discipline to a claim file, and insurers notice when the person across the table has clearly done the work.

Where Claire Focuses Her Practice

Claire takes on injury cases across North Texas, with particular attention to crashes where insurance coverage becomes the whole battle. Her clients are often people who did everything right and still got stuck fighting an insurer for money that should not be in dispute.

Her work regularly includes:

• Car and truck wrecks on the region’s crowded highways and tollways
• Crashes caused by drivers who carried no insurance at all
• Crashes caused by drivers whose coverage was nowhere near enough to cover the harm
• Serious injury claims where an insurer is already looking for reasons to pay less

The thread running through all of it is coverage, which is exactly where Claire does most of her work.

Does Texas Require Drivers to Carry Enough Insurance?

Texas requires liability insurance, but the required amount is often far too low to cover a serious injury. State law sets the minimum at $30,000 for each injured person, $60,000 per crash, and $25,000 for property damage, under Texas Transportation Code Section 601.072.

Those numbers, usually written as 30/60/25, sound like plenty until you see a hospital bill. A single ambulance ride, an ER visit, and one surgery can pass $30,000 before rehabilitation even starts.

When the at-fault driver carries only the state minimum and your injuries cost more, the shortfall lands on you unless another layer of coverage exists. That gap is the reason underinsured motorist coverage matters so much, and it is a big part of what Claire watches for.

What Happens If the Driver Who Hit You Was Uninsured?

If the driver who hit you was uninsured, you may still have a path to recovery, often through your own policy. Texas requires drivers to carry liability insurance under Texas Transportation Code Section 601.051, yet plenty of people on North Texas roads drive without it anyway.

That is where uninsured motorist coverage comes in. Texas insurers have to offer it unless you reject it in writing, and it exists precisely so a hurt driver is not left with nothing when the at-fault party has no policy. The rules for this coverage live in Texas Insurance Code Section 1952.101.

Claire’s real skill here is finding coverage that is not obvious. She digs into who actually owned the vehicle, whether the driver was borrowing someone else’s car, and whether a second or third policy might apply, because insurance follows both people and cars.

The Texas Department of Public Safety enforces the state’s financial responsibility rules, though enforcement does nothing for you at the scene of a wreck, which is why a lawyer who knows where to look matters so much.

How Does Underinsured Motorist Coverage Work in Texas?

Underinsured motorist coverage fills the gap when the at-fault driver has insurance, just not enough of it. If your losses run past the other driver’s policy limits, this coverage on your own policy can make up part of the difference.

Here is the part that surprises people. In Texas, your own insurer often does not have to pay an underinsured motorist claim until you establish that the other driver was at fault and that your damages exceed that driver’s coverage. That structure can turn the company you have paid premiums to for years into an opponent, and it is one more reason not to handle these claims alone.

The Texas Department of Insurance publishes consumer guidance on how this coverage is supposed to function, and Claire has spent years handling the reality when it does not.

Personal Injury Protection Coverage in Texas

Personal injury protection, or PIP, pays your own medical bills and part of your lost wages no matter who caused the crash. Texas insurers have to offer it, and you keep it unless you turned it down in writing, under Texas Insurance Code Section 1952.152.

PIP is useful precisely because it does not wait for a fault fight. While the insurance companies argue over who pays, PIP can cover early medical costs and replace up to 80 percent of the wages you lose while you recover.

Many people do not realize they have this coverage, and some do not realize they signed it away. Claire checks for it early, because it can put money in a client’s hands at the exact moment they need it most.

What If the At-Fault Driver Fled the Scene?

A hit-and-run can often be treated as an uninsured motorist claim, which means your own coverage may step in. That is one reason Claire tells clients to report a hit-and-run to the police and to their own insurer as fast as possible.

These cases carry their own proof problems, since the driver who caused the harm is gone. Physical evidence, witness accounts, and any camera footage from nearby businesses or traffic poles become the backbone of the claim.

The sooner someone starts gathering that proof, the better the chance of holding a coverage source accountable. Claire has handled these claims and knows how thin the window is before the evidence disappears.

Where Claire Draws the Line With Insurers

Claire is comfortable being cordial with an adjuster right up until the company stops dealing fairly. Her clients’ cases usually turn on coverage, so the fights look different from a standard liability dispute.

She sees insurers deny that coverage applies at all, offer a fraction of a valid underinsured claim, or slow-walk a payout owed under their own policyholder’s contract. None of that gets a pass.

When a company will not honor coverage a client paid for, Claire is ready to treat the insurer as the opponent it has chosen to be, including in court.

What the Law Requires of Your Insurer

Texas does not leave insurers free to handle claims however they please. The state sets standards for fair claim handling and for paying valid claims without needless delay.

Under Texas Insurance Code Section 541.060, insurers are barred from a list of unfair settlement practices, such as failing to attempt a fair settlement once liability is reasonably clear. Separate rules in Texas Insurance Code Section 542.058 address companies that delay payment on a claim after they already have what they need to pay it.

When a company crosses those lines, it can owe added interest and attorney’s fees on top of what it already owed. Claire uses these rules as leverage when an insurer treats a fair claim as optional.

Finding Every Layer of Coverage

The size of a recovery often depends less on the crash itself and more on how many insurance policies can be brought to bear. Claire treats coverage like a search, not an assumption.

Insurance follows both the driver and the vehicle, so a single wreck can involve the at-fault driver’s policy, the vehicle owner’s policy, a resident relative’s policy, and your own uninsured or underinsured coverage. Commercial crashes can add an employer’s policy or a business auto policy on top of that.

Missing even one of those layers can mean leaving real money unclaimed. Claire’s habit of tracing every possible policy is one of the most practical advantages she brings to a coverage case.

Stacking Coverage Across Your Vehicles

Households with more than one insured vehicle sometimes hold more uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage than they realize. Depending on how a policy is written, the limits on separate vehicles can sometimes be combined, a practice known as stacking.

A Stacking Example

Say a family insures three cars, each carrying underinsured motorist limits. If the policy language and the facts allow it, the coverage available for one serious crash may be larger than the limit listed on any single vehicle. That difference can decide whether a badly hurt person is made whole or left holding unpaid bills.

Whether stacking applies is never automatic, and it turns on the exact wording of your policy and the circumstances of the wreck. Insurers rarely point out that extra coverage might be available, since raising it only costs them money.

Claire Can Help You See if You Can Stack Coverage

Claire reads the full policy for exactly this reason. She checks how each vehicle is covered, how the limits are structured, and whether the language leaves any room to combine them, because a family paying three sets of premiums should get the benefit of what those premiums actually bought.

This is one more place where her habit of tracing every dollar of coverage earns its keep. A quick look at a declarations page will miss it, but a careful read of the whole policy can surface protection a hurt family never knew they had.

The takeaway is simple. If your household runs more than one policy, do not assume the number on a single declarations page is your ceiling, and do not take an adjuster’s word for what is available. Let Claire read the whole file first, because the coverage you already paid for is worth finding.

What Does Claire Look At First in a Coverage Case?

Claire starts with the policies, not the paperwork you might expect. Before anything else, she wants to know what coverage exists on every side, because that shapes what a case can realistically recover.

From there she looks at how the crash happened, what injuries resulted, and what medical care they will require over time. She also reads the fine print of your own policy, since that is where uninsured, underinsured, and PIP coverage either help you or quietly went missing.

Only then does the negotiation with the insurer begin, built on a clear picture instead of a hopeful guess. That order of operations is part of the discipline Claire had long before she ever practiced law.

Family and Roots in North Texas

Claire’s life is planted in this community. She lives on a ranch with her husband and fellow attorney, Chris Rehmet, and the two of them are raising their two children there.

She also gives her time to a number of charities. Those local roots are part of why she takes insurer misconduct personally, because the people getting shortchanged are the same neighbors she sees around North Texas every week.

Put Claire in Your Corner

If an insurance company is telling you there is no coverage, or offering you far less than your injuries have cost, get a second opinion before you sign anything. Claire will look at your policy, look at the other driver’s, and tell you honestly what coverage is actually available.

Reach Claire at (972) 499-4813 at any hour, or send the details of your crash through our contact page. Consultations are free, and there is no fee unless you collect.