Woman Claims S.S.B. Playing Malpago With Deceased Husband’s Burial Grant

Frank Baldaramos

Security guard Frank Baldaramos passed away last week, and he is scheduled to be laid to rest today. But there’s a big problem. His family says that they don’t have the money to cremate him, since they were depending on the normal fifteen hundred dollar burial grant from Social Security. They say that the S.S.B. has refused to hand over that money. They claim that the deceased was somehow overpaid pension monies over the past three years since he retired so he actually owes them. It’s a disturbing story, told to News Five this morning by Baldaramos’ widow, Rachael.

Rachael Baldaramos, Widow of Deceased

“Social Security has denied access to the burial grant that the spouse is supposed to get to bury their loved one. They have said that they made an error by overpaying him. That’s not our fault. He is entitled to it and he deserves it. I went to Social Security Friday and we claimed the death benefit. Everything was working out good until Tuesday. We were there from three o’clock until after four, when a lady came to us to tell us that we have no money to get because they made a mistake and they decided not to give us anything. They said that it was overpaying him and I think that this is a total copout and a total lie. If you are paying somebody from the age of sixty to now and this man is getting his money every month to time until the fourth of September and now you will come burst this bubble in the family’s face and say that they made an error and they made a mistake and the last money was put in the fourth of September.”

Rachael Baldaramos

Reporter

“Is there anything else that they’re telling you? Are you querying this mistake that they say that they made, that they overpaid him?”

Rachael Baldaramos

“Well all they do is just tell us and they walk away.”

Late this afternoon, the S.S.B. confirmed to us that indeed there will be no payment of a burial grant to Rachael Baldaramos, for two reasons. One is that Rachael is not the current spouse of Frank, since he remarried in 2002. And two, apparently the deceased started collecting his pension in 2012, but started working again, which means that he was double dipping. The money that S.S.B. paid him between 2012 and 2015, then, will be deducted from the burial grant which would be payable to his family.