By Nazario Rodriguez Jr.
Horizon news staff

The Legal Counsel of the Social Security Administration has advised the Senate the necessity of a law that requires all formal creditors of a decedent to file documented claims through the courts "in order to maintain and balance tradition and modernization."
Sheree Tinder, whose job is to recover debt collections on behalf of the SSA and ensure that all outstanding SS taxes are paid so all employees within the government receive their full benefits upon retirement, said such law would ensure the priority of the SSA and other government agencies as intended by the OEK.
More importantly, she said this would ensure the sanctity of an important traditional custom of Palau.
Tinder explained that in her collections work with SS there have been a few instances in which a debtor has died before full debt recovery has been made.
She said that when this happens, the SSA files a claim against the decedent’s estate to recover the remainder of the debt.
Citing Section 807, Article 41 of the Palau National Code, she said that the SSA is granted a priority lien in the assets of the state.
"It is my belief that the OEK wisely provided for this statutory lien because it understood the importance of recovering all due and owing Social Security benefits for future retirees and the Administration’s role as a fiduciary of the Retirement Fund," Tinder noted.
"However, through recent estate claims, the Administration has found that a growing number of formal creditors (such as Banks) are going to the funeral custom and demanding payment from the family of the decedent."
Tinder further noted that in her interviews, family members felt they are "forced and scared into paying formal collection agents while they are in a state of grief."
She said that the SSA’s position is "not to go to the funeral custom to collect outstanding Social Security debts."
"The Administration finds this practice to be both insensitive to the grieving family and inappropriate in relation to the custom."
She said that in going to the funeral custom to demand payment, contractual creditors are knowingly and purposefully jumping in front of other priority creditors such as the SSA and the Tax Office of the Ministry of Finance.
Tinder said that as a result, the SSA end up receiving just a fraction of the actual amount of outstanding SS debt owed by the decedent to the detriment of all SS beneficiaries.
"As a collections attorney I feel that there is a clear distinction between informal debts owed to friends and family and formal debts owed to an institutionalized creditor.