Quote - Select the collars and chest in turn and in the properties window set each invisible. This will enable you to see how they relate to the adjacent body parts. Your neck needs to be touching just the chest. It looks like it is also abutting the collars.

The solution is to extend the chest group over the collars.

Yep just figured out before you posted that my chest bone is to low.  I had to drag the tip up to the bottom of the neck bone.  I also had to drag the base of each collar bone down.  When i did this everything worked like a charm.  No tearing at all anywhere in the rig.

Now i gotta figure out how to get smooth deformation in the fingers.  Any tips from anyone?