Carmen, never lead with your settlement offer.
That truism applies almost universally, thus the word never, however the lone the exception are with public auctions, and perhaps this issue. In negotiating the lowest price at a public auction leading with, i.e. opening the bidding with your final offer is a very successful practice.
It's because it short circuits the emotional attachment others form for an idem being auctioned off.
Say an idem is worth 50 dollars and when the auctioneer asks for opening bids a bargain hunter gets in there first and opens the bidding at 5 dollars. Then the someone bids 10, then someone else bids 15 ... . And the idem sells for 75 dollars. What happened was several persons got involved and got emotional attached to buying that idem as the bidding continued with the price increasing gradually. When the price got to the idem value the incremental bidding didn't stop.
However If a person at that auction knows how, and has decided ahead of time what price they will be willing to pay is, then they can often close that emotional feedback loop by jumping in and saying 40 dollars when the auctioneer asks for an opening bid. That's real close to what is going to be the idem's final price. Someone might bid 45 and then the buyer will bid 50.
Very often though that 40 dollar opening bid will buy the idem because the opening price is above the bargain hunters range and they'll just let it go.
This reparations issue is a reversal of an auction, the bids start high and work down instead of starting low and working up, but the principle is the same.
What Carmen did was shrewd, she opened the bidding at a doable price. Had she loaded her initial offer to allow for her offer to be beaten down to the settlement price she was willing to agree to, everyone would have jumped in with their two bits and gotten emotionally attached to their position, no settlement would ever occur. The can would be kicked down the road. It probably will be anyway, but leading with a doable offer for an emotionally charged issue gives it the best chance its got.