FERS Disability: Enhancing the Chances for Success

Every missed opportunity lessens the chances for a successful outcome, and when you are dealing with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under the FERS system, and specifically when attempting to obtain a Federal Disability Retirement from them, you must take every opportunity to reinforce and take advantage of each chance given.

At every turn when OPM requests further information, such communication provides an opportunity to cite a legal precedent in characterizing the strength of your position or to reiterate the legal basis as to why your case merits further consideration beyond the “run of the mill” cases.

Can you argue the Bruner Presumption even if you have not been separated from Federal Service?  Can you make an argument by analogy?  Can you argue the “inconsistency” argument as propounded in Henderson v, OPM, or the 4-part test in Bracey?

By making such arguments at every opportunity presented, you enhance your chances for successfully being approved for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  For, in the end, all roads in a Federal Disability Retirement case lead to an appeal with an Administrative Judge at the U.S, Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and OPM is fully aware of this plain fact.

Because OPM knows that successive denials of a FERS Disability Retirement case will ultimately lead to an appeal to the MSPB, citing relevant case laws at every opportunity presented will enhance your chance for success.

Contact a disability lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin to enhance your chances for success in obtaining an approval for your FERS Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Moving Forward

Is there any other way; another direction; somewhere else?

Other societies, civilizations and cultures are satisfied with remaining static — of old ways, established villages, the way things “have always been done”.  Not here in the U.S.  Here, everything must be new and scintillating; whatever are the newest trends, we must always embrace and accept; whoever represent the most recent form of “newness” is the one considered “in”, etc.

Cast out the old; and of those left behind? — Well, too bad for them.  The entire concept of how we treat “the least” among us — whether of the old, the infirm, the disabled whether children or grownups — has never quite caught on.  Perhaps it is because we have no conscience, let alone consciousness of duty or obligation.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, “moving forward” is the only option left.  For, otherwise, you will be left behind to face the inevitable consequences which will only further make circumstances worse: Greater inability to do your job; manifestation of deficiency in your performance or attendance; placement on a Performance Improvement Plan (otherwise known by the acronym, “PIP”); further deterioration to your health, etc.

But what does “moving forward” mean?  What does it entail?

Consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  It is essentially taking an early retirement, but with greater, enhanced benefits.  It is the best option in a world where moving forward is the only way out, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is, indeed, the best way forward in a world where moving forward is the only option left.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

Qualifying for FERS Disability Retirement: How Hard is It?

That is a question which is entirely dependent upon the individual facts and circumstances of the case at hand.

Everyone would like to believe that his or her Federal Disability Retirement case is a “sure thing”.

Some attorneys, perhaps, offer a “money-back guarantee” — but what is such a guarantee worth?  To merely return the money, or some portion of it, if a case has failed to be approved?  How hard do you think such an attorney will fight for your case if it gets denied at the First Stage of the process and it appears that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is going to fight to deny your case at every level of the administrative process?

There are few, if any, “slam dunk” cases, and OPM is a Federal Agency which guards its territory as if their life depended upon it — and well they should, as every Federal Disability Retirement application should be scrutinized to the extent that each must meet the legal criteria for approval and valid viability.  But that is where the dispute and the battleground exists: It is the interpretation of the law and its interpretive application to each individual case.

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who will fight for an approval of your Federal Disability Retirement case — one who has the experience, wisdom and fortitude to aggressively pursue your Federal Disability Retirement benefits, no matter how hard it is.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Future Plans Deterred

The common criticism launched against Bishop Berkeley, whether deservedly or not, is that his philosophical positions fly against the common sense of everyday experience.  Of course, it all depends upon how you interpret his position.

His generally-accepted dictum of “Esse est percipi” (no, we will not try and be like the great William F. Buckley, engaging in the well-known habit of interspersing Latin phrases which no one understood but everyone acted like they did; and instead will provide in the next dependent clause the English translation so as not to appear too intellectually prudish) — “To be (i.e., to exist) is to be perceived” — engendered ridicule, confusion, complex rebuttals for justification of untenable positions, and a firestorm of fascinating linguistic gymnastics to explain contortions of philosophical positions.  For, we all believe that there exists, beyond our own perceptions, an objective world separate and apart from the experiential sensations of our own bodies.

One might counter: If “existence” is defined merely by our own sensations, then we should be able to defy the objective existence of the world by numbing our perceptual apparatus.  Thus, if a bus is oncoming, simply blot out our perceptual capacities and when the bus “hits” us — poof! — no bus.  Similarly, when we leave a room, the existence of the room from which we just exited is assumed to still exist despite our distance from it where we no longer perceive it.  In other words, we “believe” that the viability of the objective world does not depend upon our perceiving it.

Thus, the criticism of the statement itself — “To be” (i.e., exist) “is to be perceived” (i.e., that such existence depends upon our perception of it) — is thought to be nonsensical.  It is akin, likewise, to our future plans.  We expect future occurrences to follow upon the path of present conditions.  Thus do we wake up each morning and expect the coffee to taste somewhat like the way it tasted the day before, and the day before that; that when we awaken, the ceiling above is the same color as it was the morning previous; and that the office or worksite we will approach will be there as it was before.  The future depends upon the present; the present is inescapably embraced by the past; and so we walk about in this universe expecting that future plans will be undeterred by unexpected phenomena.  Except, when they are.

Medical conditions do that, don’t they?  They deter future plans because they disrupt what we were before; they alter the scope of who we were just yesterday, or the day before.  The proverbial “room of existence” that Berkeley posited has in fact changed; it is no longer the “I” who was yesterday.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is an attempt to regain the existential “I” of yesterday, in an effort to be able to focus upon one’s health instead of constantly worrying about tomorrow’s future with one’s Federal Agency or Postal Service job.  Consider consulting with an Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  It may be that existence depends more upon one’s perception than you think, and that future plans deterred may become undeterred by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Discarded Lives

It is not a determination which one makes about one’s self; one cannot “discard” one’s own life anymore than you can assert the existence of a twin brother merely because you see an image of yourself in the mirror.

One can, of course, do all sorts of things that are deemed detrimental to one’s own self-interest — of self harm; of abandonment of a career; of making bad decisions and refusing to follow sound advice, etc.  But from the perspective of the person deemed to have made such bad decisions, such choices never rise to the level of discarding one’s life; it is merely the judgment and conclusion of others who deem that, in the aggregate, the decisions adopted are regarded in terms of discarded lives.

Everyone always has advice to freely give; whether they accept and live by their own advice is a separate matter.

If we were to have a bird’s-eye view from far above, of all of the decisions we have made in our lives, we would see a continuum of bifurcated forks that leave behind abandoned trails and pathways that were never taken.  Had we taken them, would our lives be any different?  Probably.  It is when we have taken too many of the “wrong turns” that a conclusion is finally reached: Of a life once so promising, and now no longer but merely one of the many discarded lives.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who feel that the Federal Agency they work for or the Postal facility they have toiled under have abandoned them and have considered them to be a “discarded life” — not for any particular decision you have made, but because of a medical condition that prevents you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job — you may want to consider preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

To give up and abandon a benefit you worked so hard to attain would be tantamount to agreeing that you are one of the “discarded lives” out there; to fight for the benefit is to assert your worth and a refutation of a judgment by others that yours is another discarded life to be ignored.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Representation: The pecking order

Watching birds fly and cavort around a bird-feeder, one realizes that the term as applied to human conduct is not too far from the reality of the natural order of things.  There is, indeed, a “pecking order” in the world of birds and fowls aflight; it has to do with size, aggression, quickness and desire to survive. In other words, how birds behave is not too far afield from the way in which humans interact.

As children being thrown together in various institutions called “public schools”, we all recognize the concept of “the pecking order” – the sequence of priorities, of who dominates, which cliques attain a level of status and recognition, what is allowed and not, where one is invited to enter before or after others; it is the purest form of Darwinian natural selection, no matter what societal and cosmetic impediments and safeguards are put in place in order to engage in social engineering of one sort or another.

People think that this pecking order ends upon graduating from public school; that, somehow, release from high school ends this natural order of survival only for the fittest.  Yet, such pecking orders continue throughout – college; the military; the workplace; families.  They all require a pecking order of one kind or another, precisely because it is “natural” and the selection process is innately driven.

In the fowl world – both as “foul” and “fowl” – birds get to feed from the best and choicest sources based upon size, aggressiveness, and bravado displayed in standing one’s ground.  It is often the same with the human world of foul interactions, despite our claim to having become “civilized” and sophisticated, beyond reproach, somehow now asserting our independence and detachment from the genetically determined patterns of behavior.

More and more, however, it becomes clear that we are never exempted from the essence of our natures.  Aristotle may have asserted the grand stature of man with his rationality and capacity to cogitate, but the reality is that the ancient Greek civilization would soon become overpowered and dominated by the most basest of human instincts – of conquering by might and strength.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to manifest, to reveal, to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, it becomes clear that the old “pecking order” approach again will dominate.

Federal agencies and the Postal Service will assert its cold dominance and indifference to the weak of this world, and weakness is never shown with greater vulnerability than when one must admit that he or she suffers from a medical condition.  Just as the fowls begin to take advantage of shown weaknesses in the pecking order of Darwinian natural, so Federal Agencies and U.S. Postal facilities show no remorse in treating their workers who show weakness with cruelty and aggressive lack of empathy.

Filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is an aggressive step to “fight back” against the rise of the pecking order that is, unfortunately, an inevitable consequences of who we are and continue to be.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: The tentative step

This is a tough and dangerous world.  No longer a Hobbesian State of Nature nor of War, the Social Contract as envisioned by Locke or Rousseau provides some nominal protection, and thus do we identify ourselves as “civilized” entities in yet a dystopian universe where a greater majority of the rest of the world acts with unconcerned insanity by engaging in senseless wars of mass killings and genocidal encounters.  In such a world, we thoughtlessly bring newborns who must contend with an uncertain future, fraught with challenges unasked for and conflicts yet to be encountered.

Those tentative first steps of a toddler – how we watch with awe and observe with wonderment.  Why is that?  Why is the transition from ambulating as most other mammals do on four legs, to engaging an awkwardly wobble as a bipedal hominid, of such significance?  Is it because it marks the steps of initiation into the club of “civilized” society – that to stand upright and walk with our two feet, as opposed to the addition of the other two appendages, signifies the next stage of growth and maturity?  Yet, that tentative step reveals all, doesn’t it?

It marks the magnification of uncertainty for the future; it reveals the imperfection of the human animal; and it manifests the symbol of insecurity by deliverance of a vulnerable entity thrown into a pit of vipers and hyenas.  We do this to ourselves, and to the ones we say we love.  And as the toddler grows up, through further steps of initiations into a cruel world, how that tentative step cements and molds itself into a characterization of so much of life’s violent encounters.  Whether remembered or not, those nascent steps of uncertainty carry along with us like Pilgrim’s burdensome backpack, weighing upon us at different and varying stages of our lives.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find that a medical condition reenacts those tentative steps taken as a toddler, one becomes reminded that we came into this world uninvited, presented without a guide as to how to go about living life, and suddenly find yourself with a challenge:  No longer able to perform all of the essential elements of your job, your choices are to stay and endure the pain; leave, resign and walk away without anything you worked so hard to attain; or file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

And, like the toddler taking those first tentative steps, this is a new endeavor, a next phase, but probably without those doting parents cheering you on.  As a result, you may need to consult a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement law, if only to steady those two feet as you jump forward into an uncertain future by submitting a Federal Disability Retirement application to the OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Comfort Zones

For animals, they are often designated as “arc of flight” — that invisible periphery where violation results in immediate retreat or thoughtless stampede.  For humans, it is identified as one’s “space”, or “privacy bubble”, and while self-control and societal norms have curtailed and somewhat dulled the thousands of years of evolutionary refinements to reactive instincts, the palpable discomfort manifested, the shifting unease of taboos violated, and for some, an onset of panic and heightened anxiety are the resulting characteristics of Darwinian antecedents.

Comfort zones apply to the generic aegis of such unseen safety nets.  For most of us, it is comprised of predictability and the security which comes from repetitive monotony.  That is why, even to one’s detriment, one will cling to the known quantity, even if the attraction of the unknown outweighs with obvious benefits and accruals.  Like the frog which sits calmly in a pot of water ever increasingly rising in temperature, the person who walks about within the confines of one’s comfort zone is in danger always of violative harm.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the question of the flashpoint — the intersection of continuing in one’s capacity and the harm it inflicts by doing so — is a complex admixture of needs, wants, comfort zones and the desire to persist.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers are a hard-working bunch who, in their collective stubbornness, refuse to give up.  Whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset matters not; it is not the system, the benefits nor the years of service; rather, it is often the career itself and the involvement with the “mission of the agency”.  It is a sense of belonging, of being part of a group of individuals, an agency, a department, and always with a sense of purpose and sometimes with a clarity of future endeavors.

Having gone to work for these many years, the value of daily routine cannot be underestimated, and therein lies the essence of one’s comfort zone:  life and the foreseeable future.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is a violation of one’s comfort zone.  It is tantamount to entering the arc of flight for a flock of sheep, or the privacy bubble at a social gathering.  But when a medical condition mandates the necessity of a step for self-preservation, any consideration for one’s comfort zone should be set aside, as the road to attaining the purposive end of an OPM Disability Retirement annuity may test the very fabric of invisible characteristics yet to be revealed.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Word Additions

When viewing a landscape, does the utterance of words add anything to the beauty or desolation?  When rage wells up within a tormented soul, do words which convey a rational thought process ameliorate the temperament in any way?  Whether, in the evolutionary progression of one’s biological apparatus, the appearance of language beyond fundamental communication (e.g., for advanced warning of dangers, conveying of location, and similarly basic devices of informational immediacy) enhances the meaningfulness of the thing itself, is a question beyond mere pedantic interest.

Does a person add anything to the beauty of a red dawn, by describing it with words and conceptual constructs?  Or, better yet, do we glean any greater understanding by descriptive means, or does it merely camouflage the exquisiteness of the thing itself?  There are exceptions.

Medical conditions, and the need to understand their origin, impact, treatment modalities and prognosis allow for individuals to makes decisions based upon information gathered.  The pain itself, or the destructive and progressively debilitating nature of a medical condition, may not require descriptive devices of deciphering linguistic dalliances; but for the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who must map out one’s future course of actions, the words which one chooses to employ can make all the difference in the conceptual world we live in.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit available to all Federal and Postal employees who find themselves with a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job.

For Federal and Postal employees under FERS (which most Federal and Postal employees are under, inasmuch as CSRS and CSRS Offset employees are becoming rarer by the year), a minimum of 18 months of Federal Service must be accumulated; but once that threshold is met, it is the evidentiary sufficiency based upon the legal criteria as mandated by statute, the courts, and the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, which must be complied with through the use of words.

In viewing beauty, words rarely add; in experiencing feelings, language often merely complicates; but in engaging a complex bureaucratic process, words and conceptual constructs add to the future viability of one’s capacity to meet the complex challenges of an ever-changing world.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire