Legal Question in Personal Injury in Georgia

Hi!

About 3 weeks ago I was visiting my mother at her home. I have a 2 month old baby who was with me at the time. My mother's driveway is very steep and short. She already has 2 cars parked in the driveway. While there would have been just enough room for me to park in the driveway behind one of her cars, the driveway is entirely too steep for me to safely get the baby out of the backseat and down the hill without the door potentially closing on me while trying to get her out (I drive a Honda Element with suicide style doors on the back), or falling down the hill. So, I parked in my mother's yard and walked to the front door in the grass which didn't require me to carry the baby down a steep hill. Within a few minutes of me being at my mother's house, the neighbors came to let me know that someone had hit my car.

A 16 year old kid driving a full size pickup truck backed out of the driveway across the street from my mother's driveway and backed out at an angle because he was trying not to hit trees in the yard of the house he was leaving. He was also not paying attention to what was behind him because he was focused on trying not to scrape the trees with the front left side of his truck that he backed into my mom's yard and his my car with the rear passenger side bumper of his truck. There was no damage to his truck but there is a huge scrape and dent on my driver's side door. The kid begged me not to call the police, he said he would call his dad who would come write me a check for the damage. While we wait for the kid's father to arrive, we photograph my car and the area and also videotape the area. The father arrives and wants to write me a check for $500 so that we don't have to report the accident to insurance because he has 9 kids, 7 of them are on his insurance and the 16 year old son has only had his license for 1 month and it would cost more to go through insurance that for him to pay out of pocket. So, I decide to be nice and allow him to pay out of pocket but tell him I will need to get an estimate before taking any money from him so that I don't risk getting shorted or him paying too much. We both agree that I will get an estimate and give him a call. So, I do and find out it will cost $995 to fix my car and $200 a week for a rental car because it will take 1-2 weeks to fix my car. My husband called the father and let him know we had gotten the quote and would be glad to email it to him. He said it was fine and he would give us a call in 1-2 days to meet up to write a check. It's been 3 weeks and he hasn't called us back or returned our calls. So, my husband called him to let him know that we would have to report this to insurance since he wasn't getting back to us. Within 5 minutes we get a call back from the father saying that they have decided it's not their fault since I was parked on the side of the road. He says that they will pay $500 but that's all they are willing to pay. As I said above, I was parked in my mom's yard which was at the edge of the road but not in the road by any means. I was also not blocking anyone's driveway or blocking the road at all. I have pictures that prove this. We do not have a police report or the father's insurance. We do have his name, address, phone number, and license number. What are my options at this point? Was I illegally parked if I was in my mom's yard at the edge of the road?

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