Have your wife start taking notes NOW if she starts to feel any aches or pains. Document everything she suddenly has difficulty doing (housework, playing with the kids/pets, hobbies, etc.). Keep a journal, just in case you end up suing.
I’m curious: which insurance company are you tangling with?
What puzzles me is why isn’t this the problem of the credit provider? I don’t think in Australia any credit provider would allow you to drive around in a car that didn’t carry enough insurance to pay them out if it were destroyed. It’s the same deal with home loans - if you own your house you don’t have to insure it, if someone holds a mortgage over it they will require proof of renewal each year.
If the insurance company is making you a reasonable offer, it should be possible to find a replacement car of the same make and model in a condition similar to your old car before the accident. If you can buy such a car for the amount of the settlement, you will be restored to the position you were in before the accident (with a similar car and owing the same amount of money). If you don’t believe the offer is high enough, you can ask the insurance company to find you a replacement car for the amount of the offer. If they find one, buy it. If they can’t find one, it’s evidence that they should offer you more money.
The other driver can’t be made to pay for the balance of your loan. All a court can do is make sure you are restored to the same financial status as before the collision. It’s not the other driver’s fault that your loan was upside-down. A court might order the other driver to pay the deductible (if there is any in this case).
I can’t believe no one ha suggested this yet, but…
When you get your replacement car, and get it insured, get loan/lease payoff coverage. It may be called any number of things, but my Progressive policy calls it just that. It covers the payoff value of your car should it get totalled for less than you owe. It’s coverage that’s meant to take care of your exact situation.
And the best part? It’s dirt cheap. It costs me $14 every 6 months for my older car (1 more year till payoff), and $26 every 6 months for my newer (6 month old) car.
So that’s $80 a year for two cars. Cheap piece of mind for knowing that the loan is paid off no matter what.
… or “peace of mind,” whichever you prefer
This is an “owner-retained” total loss settlement. Here’s what is happening.
You & the insurance company agree that your car is worth $5000. You can receive this compensation in one of 2 ways:
Kat Kelley is correct less often than than they are way off the mark. Occaisionall they guess right.
Polycarp, believe me, you’re one of the few I’d argue with lightly, but “But you have every right, absent some oddity in your own state’s laws, to sue him (not the insurance company) for whatever losses you have incurred due to the accident” is not going to be the case. Once you ask the other fellow into the courtrom to determine if he owes you anything more, his insurance company will be there with him and will be providing his defense–that’s how the liability coverage on his policy works.
audilover that peace of mind thing is usually called GAP insurance. 
don’t ask :eek: Homeowner’s is a different animal. Auto lenders require evidence of insurance as well. If they don’t get it they take out a (ferociously expensive) loan protection policy (which pays only THEM) and roll that premium into the car loan. The big difference between insuring a hous & insuring a car: you get rid of a wrecked car & you rebuild a wrecked house–because the land it is on can not be gotten rid of. Homeowner’s policies are designed to rebuild the house on the same lot. Therefore after your house is burned flat & rebuilt you are restored. Problems DO arise when the bank wants a policy for, say $300,000 to cover the purchase price, but the insurance company wants to cover only the replacement cost of the house. The $100,000 difference is the market value of the land–which isn’t going anywhere (and is excluded from most policies if it does go somewhere) and is threfore uninsurable. These problems are usually solved when the lender gets this point bashed into his skull by a Paladin Insurance Guy who refuses to bilk his policyholder. 
That doesn’t seem right. Oh sure, you can sue him–you can sue anybody for any imaginary reason–but I don’t think you have any chance of winning. The instant before the accident, you had an $8,000 debt and a $5,000 car. You were $3,000 in overall debt.
Now the car is totaled and you have $5,000 in cash. You are still the same $3,000 in debt as before the accident. You are no worse off than you were before the accident. Therefore, you can’t recover any amount. Besides, you could take that $5,000 and buy the same model car that was totalled and you’d be exactly the same as before.
Well, except the bank gets paid first. Aside from this being their right as a lien holder, they also have the title to the car and won’t give it up until they get m-o-n-e-y.
This is the BIGGEST reason why being upside down sucks. If your credit has taken a dive since you bought the car, you may not be able to snatch a loan sufficient to replace your car. That’s when the world becomes a dark and lonely place for some people. 
:mad: :smack: :eek:
PolyCarp and Matchka, I guess I live in one of those states where “weird laws” don’t allow you to sue at-fault drivers. Well, you can, but it’s limited to $500, less the portion he’s at fault. Okay, you can sue for more or whatever reason you want, but it’ll be thrown right out of court. No fault really, really is a great thing, but don’t fight about that statement; there are already other threads for that.
ummm… yeahh… is your bank GMAC? I know for a fact they include gap coverage in their leases – maybe they do for traditional financing? On that note, ask the bank – they may have gap coverage as part of your loan contract.
You need to realize you have 2 claims - property damage and personal injury.
Using the above figures, collect $5000 from your insurer and pay down your loan. Keep in mind that the adjuster works for the insurance company and what he pays you is somewhat negotiable. Don’t forget to subtract your deductible. You will be out $3000+ but you owed this before the crash - you need to realize this. The crash did not cause your $3000 debt. Also, you can sue the at fault driver for your deductible, but that’s all. And keep in mind that you subrogated your rights to the insurer, meaning it has a right to sue the at fault driver for the first $5000, and you may have to turn over your proceeds to the insurer to reimburse it. I’m not sure. You should read your policy.
Don’t forget the personal injury claim. Call the at fault driver’s ins. co. You can often get up to 3 times your special damages for an injury. Special damages are the actual out of pocket costs of doctor bills, crutches, medicine, xrays, etc. You get more than 100% in exchange for waiving your right to pain and suffering. Admittedly this is not an exact way to measure pain but this is what happens in most cases. You can try to get this money out of the insurer yourself or hire a lawyer on a contingency basis, but most of them are not going to get more than 3X specials unless there are some extenuating circumstances (intentional crash, guy was drunk, etc.) or some very deep pockets.
Sorry y’all, my internet has been down the past few days. Here’s an update:
[ul]
[li]We are definetely going to retain a lawyer. The wife has been real sore the past couple days and is basically immobile and on muscle relaxers.[/li][li]The adjuster gave us a quote for only about $600 less than we owe. So we MAY take that.[/li][li]The wife is starting a journal. We have a friend who is a physical therapist so he’s helping a lot.[/li][li]We do not have gap insurance. We called the dealer and the bank. To our recolection we were never offered it, but you can be dang sure were gonna have that summ-an-a-bitch from here on out.[/li][/ul]
No decisons will be made until we meet with the lawyer and he is working on a contingency basis. Here’s the next question. OUR insurance is covering our medical expenses. Does this leave us the abillity to still sue for personal injury. I know the pain and suffering is still an option, but I’m not sure if this hurts our chances.
As a side note, I’d just like to say thank you. You all have been great. This thread has renewed my faith in the overall goodness of the everyday doper. Guess I was spending too much time in the pit before. 
Well, that’s true. Except that they really can’t get their money. You owe them $8,000 and you get $5,000 from the settlement. If they insist on taking the $5,000, you are still $3,000 in the hole–just like you were when you had a car.
Well, if you can convince the bank to let you keep the $5,000 so you can buy a replacement car, you can still make payments on the $8,000 loan and everything will be just as it was before the accident.
Now, what you seem to be thinking is that you want to go out and pay $8,000 for another $5,000 car. If you do, then you’ll be another $3,000 in the hole. That’s your fault, not the other driver. The other driver is only responsable for giving you $5,000 for a car exactly like the one he destroyed.
When whiplash (hyperextension/hyperflexion injury) occurs, joints swell and paraspinal musculature goes into spasm. They take forever to go down on their own, and the resulting joint dysfunction can be permanent, very painful and debilitating. Quality of life can suffer sharply, which can also affect the spouse in ways you haven’t begun to discover yet. (I know–my wife and I were in a doozy about a year and a half ago–the kid hit us THREE times from behind in his truck and got a ticket.)
My personal $.02 would be to find a well respected doctor of chiropractic (your neurologist or personal injury atty. can perhaps recommend one whom they work with) and get your wife in there immediately. This is while continuing care under your current medical physician also. Muscle relaxers and painkillers are fine, but they are hard on the body, and merely palliative rather than curative or remedial in nature. Just follow the course of therapy as you would a prescription for medication–with gentle adjustments over time, some of the normal cervical curve and most if not all of her mobility could be restored, if you get after it quickly. (But why do I have to keep going back after the first visit? --Basically because the muscles in spasm will try desperately to lock up the injured area for as long as possible. They “think” they’re helping it heal by not letting it move much. Instead they’re “teaching” the joints that these new greatly restricted motion patterns are the way to go from now on. Meanwhile, scar tissue forms within and around the joints. Then it contracts over time, restricting motion even further and creating tiny microadhesions to surrounding nerve fibers, continually tugging on them, thus producing the classic post-accident chronic neck pain. No fun. Let your DC explain the rest.)
If you have any bias against chiropractors in general, now would be a good time to set that aside. You can always pick it up again after you’ve seen to your wife’s health needs. (What level of comfort and restored mobility does she NOT deserve?) Even most MDs nowadays, if they’re honest, admit that whiplash is what chiropractors do better than anyone else, so you might as well take advantage of it. Your car insurance will cover the monetary costs.
If you’re going to do it, do it right away, without any further delay. Every day you wait makes it more difficult and makes it take longer for the area to regain normal function without pain. Still continue with any medications your MD has prescribed that your wife wants to take. But I highly recommend getting right to fixing the actual problem. And stick with ice, please. Heating pad…trash can. They go together.
There is actually a way around this situation in some cases. Last year I got rear-ended while stopped in my truck. My insurance company decided that the cutoff for a total loss was $4100, and the estimate came out to just about $4200, so they made me an offer to total it. I really didn’t want to go through the trouble of buying a new truck, because the one I had was reliable and in pretty good shape except for what amounted to a bunch of expensive cosmetic damage. I griped at them for a while, and then, realizing I was getting nowhere, I decided to try the other guy’s insurance company. Their appraiser happened to come in a little bit lower on the damage, so they didn’t total it. I had the shop cut a couple of corners (since when does a ford ranger need pinstriping and a brand new bumper?), and they brought the whole thing in under budget. I paid not a cent, and I got to keep my truck (and smugly tell my insurance company that I got a better offer).
On a related subject, I feel I must philosophize on the nature of insurance for a moment. Hear me out, and you just might end up feeling less “screwed.” Don’t think of insurance as some kind of magical get-out-of-trouble-scot-free protection – think of it as lessening the “that sucks” factor. Getting in an accident sucks, and having to pay out $5000 in one big whack would ruin most folks. Your alternative is to buy into this big buffer called insurance. You pay thousands of dollars in premiums at a slow, predictable rate, and what that buys you is not having to pay out thousands of dollars in sudden, unpredictable bursts when bad things happen. It doesn’t make getting into an accident stop sucking, it just makes it so that it doesn’t ruin you. Sometimes you come out ahead, and sometimes you come out behind, but on average, you come out almost even (almost because the insurance company has to make a little money), with the huge added benefit of your costs being evened out over a long period of time.
The best way to not feel screwed by insurance is to imagine the situation you’d be in if you didn’t have it. Was it worth it? Probably.
(and trust me, I’m not only saying this because my deal turned out good. I’ve also had my car stolen twice in the past month and a half, and that’s sure as hell gonna set me back a couple thousand dollars when all is said and done)
No, the medical insurance provided by your own auto insurance is to just pay the bills temporarily so that you don’t have doctors and hospitals breaking your door down to get the bills paid. Ultimately they will be reimbursed what ever they pay now out of your wife’s injury settlement.
I know that accidents are no laughing matter, but i thought you might be cheered up a bit by the “Insurance Claim Hall of Fame.”
Ruby may have it right. You medicals are being paid by Personal Injury Protection or a simple Medical Payments coverage on your own policy. This expense may or may not be reimbursed to your company, up 'til July 2003 in Colorado, the insurance company had to pay and eat your medical bills regardless of who caused the injury. Again, check the rules in your state (call your insurance claims person and just ask quetions–they LOVE not getting yelled at while getting a chance to explain stuff (can you tell?).
ntucker: “Don’t think of insurance as some kind of magical get-out-of-trouble-scot-free protection – think of it as lessening the “that sucks” factor.” I’ve been trying for YEARS to think of how to explain exactly this to customers. Thanks for the word track!