Sorry to hear about that. Glad your wife is ok.
With your car, depends on if the frame was bent. Do the car doors close properly without any miss allingment? If they do, then the frame is probably ok, but they wont know that for sure until the dismantel the rear end! If the doors do NOT close properly then you have Frame damage and that is usually a right off as the cost to fix is it is ALOT more then waht the car is worth! But, with that said, there are so many factors to be considerd, I mean the insurance company may give it a Salvage title, meaning the car was "this" close to being scrapped but was fixed. Only thing is the title will have in BIG RED LETTERS across it saying "SALVAGE". Drastically killing the resale value of the car to not much more than nothing!
If you choose to fix it, the insurance company will do an estimate on this fix, even after a repair shop has done one too. Once they dismantel the rear end and take a look at it, it still maybe a right off even after they say they can fix it. Because they cant "really" tell the cost of repair just by looking at it, they need to get "behind" the damage to fnd that out. If they then total the car your screwed, you wont get as much money for the car then if you take the money from the highest estimeate you received, either from a repair shop or from your insurance company (correct me if im wrong someone).
