Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: The Wrong Approach of Not Losing

Both in sports and in politics, the sure-fire way of ensuring a negative outcome is to play not to lose.  Similarly, in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, there is a logical sequence of events and issues to tackle.

While it is important to become “informed”, and to have a peripheral eye towards potential future problems (indeed, the undersigned author has written numerous articles about building foundational blocks to prevent future issues from becoming obstacles; and of concretizing potential red flags and addressing them before they become actual roadblocks to a successful outcome, etc.), it is also important to maintain a “present” perspective, and to keep the logical sequence of the mechanical aspects of preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement case at hand.

Once the decision is made to go forward, the multiplicity of complex components of putting together a Federal Disability Retirement application can derail an attempt if every inch of minutiae is ruminated over. Move forward with what one has, and do it with a goal of a successful outcome.

Disability Retirement under FERS or CSRS needs to be approached, first and foremost, in its most basic components:  A medical condition (the doctor’s narrative report); the applicant’s statement of disability; the bridge between the two.  Everything else is a complexity which encapsulates details which, while important, must remain on the periphery and lend supportive contact to the central issues of the case.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire