Insurance won't match assessment

Depends, what was the pre accident value of the car?

"we stand over our assessment tough, upped the offer to 10k"

That's a pretty weird statement, when they are increasing their offer by almost 70% (Extra 4K)?

Also is it your insurance company or the other drivers insurance?

Hold up here now before you get screwed.

Your wife was in an accident where other party is at fault. You are therefore entitled to be put back in identical position as before the crash. You are also entitled to depreciation of your property due to the crash even when they fix the car. You are also entitled to hire car and all other associated costs.

It is your car. It goes to repairer of your choice, not some garage decided by other party insurer. It sounds like an economic right off if the 13k figure is accurate as it will be cheaper for insurer to buy out your car off you for market value and then get salvage money from the trade.

Don't bend under these thugs. Find a main dealer for your brand to handle the repair quote via an insurance approved body shop having done a full and thorough inspection of the car and go from there.

Forget going through a branded garage for crash repair. They will get a quote and add 50%. And that's not an exaggeration.

Go to some place like Ace Autobody who will stand over their work and use OEM parts and will repair to manufacture standard.

You might find 10k is sufficient. But if they say €13k, the insurance will have to accept it.

(a) Do not claim off your own Insurer (in this case your wife's insurer). She will have a claim against her until her Insurer gets reimbursed, and if her renewal date occurs prior to this she will have lost her no-claims and also be penalised for making a claim.

(b) Get a Solicitor involved. A private individual rarely gets a claim against another Driver's Insurer sorted quickly ( and to their satisfaction) by going it alone. A Solicitor will charge for the initial consultation (150 Euro on average). All further fees due to them are the Insurer's problem. Also the Solicitor route will mean a much faster and fairer ( for yourselves) payout from the Insurer.

We had a situation like this a few years ago. Our car hit, whilst stopped, by other car (which had lost control). Other driver completely at fault, admitted. Tens of witnesses.

Our insurer were nigh-on useless. They just wanted to throw in the towel.

So we took on the 3rd Party Insurer directly, and went from a derisory offer of 1700 iirc to write it off, to getting them to pay us just over €6k directly to us, and we got the car repaired. We didn't want, and weren't interested in replacing it, and importing a replacement of that spec etc was the €6k figure. They were just lazy and looking up DoneDeal for junker pricing imho.

Don't give up, stand your ground, the other party has admitted full liability so that part is over. As mentioned above, you are entitled to be put back into the pre-crash position with no losses.

The longer this goes on, the more it'll cost them.

I would do one of two things;

1 - get a full cost repair plus an allowance for the hassle, depreciation & car hire etc. Get a number for that.

or

2 - get a price for a replacement vehicle identical to what you had - bear in mind in this market that may well be MORE than you paid a few months' ago, not less.

Get them numbers in front of 3rd Party insurer, via a solicitor if you want, and stick to it.

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