Advice needed - delicate situation

[berlintaxi]

Some Gump said:

He wasn't sick, he was a tosser. Sick is when something out of your control makes you ill, like a virus or cancer. Self imposed sickness due to lack of willpower is not an excuse to key lots of people's cars.

Says the man with the perfect life and no skeletons in his cupboard, how do you know what drove him to the place he was in?

[boyse7en]

LoonR1 said:

Have you ever tried getting money off a scumbag? It's a waste of time. They never pay and you waste even more money chasing it.

As for paying higher insurance and losing NCD text if you claim then you weigh it up against the cost of repair.

He's not trying to get money off of a 'scumbag', he's trying to get money from his estate. If the guy was a professional/working prior to his alcoholism he may or may not have enough to cover the claim. Depends whether he drank the house, so to speak. Even if he was on a bottle of whiskey a day, it would take a while

[tenpenceshort]

LoonR1 said:

Have you ever tried getting money off a scumbag? It's a waste of time. They never pay and you waste even more money chasing it.

As for paying higher insurance and losing NCD text if you claim then you weigh it up against the cost of repair.

Absolutely this. Stressing out trying to chase a (relatively) small amount of money from an estate which may or may not be insolvent, or could choose to fight tooth and nail against the claim, seems pointless in the grand scheme of things. It's bad timing for the OP and very unfortunate, but that's the nature of things.

Even had he lived to be prosecuted and convicted, there's no guarantee the court would have ordered compensation sufficient to cover the full cost of the repair.