OPM Disability Retirement: The Recognition of Time

Time is a factor in all of our lives; we are conditioned to it; we respond to the constraints, and procrastinate because of its allowance.  Both time and timing may be factors in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

For the Federal or Postal worker who is contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, the fact that it is the “end of the year” should not be the motivating factor, nor that in a week or so it will be the “beginning of a New Year”.  Rather, the issue of time and timing should be governed by the extent and severity of one’s medical condition, and its impact upon one’s inability to perform the essential elements of one’s job.

As recognition and utilization of time is always an indicator of proper planning, so it is with the Federal and Postal Worker who must prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: In Life, the Pragmatic Trumps the Theoretical

In administrative and other processes, as in life generally, there are issues which on a theoretical level would seem to work; but when tested in the “real world”, somehow the perfect paradigm suddenly disintegrates.  Thus, one may ascribe a series of seemingly logical propositions, each in their independent and isolated delineations apparently stand strong and without a flaw; but somehow, in their linear progression of dependence, one upon the previous one, the linkage itself may be the determining factor.

Thus the old adage:  An X is only as strong as the weakest link.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, the Federal or Postal employee may lay out a plan of attack which, on its face, may appear sound and credible; but as experience in anything constitutes the crux of everything, so the first-time experience of thinking that one’s own case is a “slam-dunk” case because the “pain I feel” is so excruciating that there is no way that OPM could do otherwise than to approve my case, may be that weakest link.

Think again.  OPM deals with thousands of such cases; your particular case, as the unique case singularly known by you, is essentially a mere theoretical example of countless other such cases.  The pragmatic reality of the Federal bureaucracy is what one must ultimately face; again, as in life in general, the practical aspects of an engagement rules the day.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: Refinements

One often hears of a “refined” or “cultured” person; such a description often provokes an image of one who has had the leisure time in order to engage in the arts and of higher society; and the word itself leaves connotations of perfecting the rough edges of a person, thing or work.  But if the focus of one’s efforts is upon refinement at the outset, then there is the danger that the core of the focus will not have been adequately worked upon.

Refinements should come only after the essence of a work has been produced, just as leisure time should be enjoyed only after one has completed the necessary work.  Refinements should not be the focus of one’s attention if the centrality and essence of the issue is not first attended to; and so it is with all things in life.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, it is important to focus upon creating, formulating and producing an excellent Statement of Disability; expending the effort to obtain an effective medical report; promulgating the applicable legal arguments which support the substantive underpinning one’s Federal Disability Retirement application.

Refinements can be made; but such a focus should only be engaged once the core essence of a case has been formulated.  Leisure time is just that — only after the essence of a case has been attended to.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: The Owl, the Chicken, and the Anomaly of Life

In the early morning hours as the peripheral light of the sun reaches the crest of the horizon, the insidious owl glides seamlessly and noiselessly above the tips of tree lines, and upon a slight movement, flutters a wing and swoops down.

In a second, the head of the injured chicken is severed; yet, without the connecting neurotransmitters guiding the body, the headless fowl persists in running, attempting to escape from the prey which has already been encountered.

Thus, civilization develops the adage:  running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  And that often describes the Federal or Postal employee who attempts to desperately put together a Federal Disability Retirement application and submit it to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Dealing with one’s medical conditions is stressful enough; attempting to wind through a Federal bureaucracy and the administrative obstacles of proving and establishing the nexus between one’s medical condition and the essential elements of one’s job, only compounds and complicates the process.

To further the analogy, the question is:  Who represents the owl — the Office of Personnel Management, or the entire Federal bureaucracy?  Or, moreover, while the owl flies away with the head, it is often the scavengers who come and feed upon the rest of the torso.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Worker Disability Retirement: Societal Complexities

For over 50 years, we have been told that our lives will be simpler, more efficient, of greater ease, resulting from the technological advancement of society at large.

With each technological innovation, some aspect of the common man’s life was supposed to be unburdened, with greater leisure time and less stress.  But a fundamental principle of human nature was ignored throughout the incremental advancement towards such sophistication:  the innate hunger to create ever more, and the desire by those at the pinnacle of civilization to play the role of master of the universe.

In legal circles, we were all doomed once the fax machine was invented; for, with such a contraption, the 3-4 days it took to send out a first class letter confirming a conversation or following up on one, became instantaneous, and the war of the who-said-what and what was settled upon became an urgent necessity with the ability to send and receive immediately.

Contrary to the great promise of our times, technology and modernization has further complicated, stressed and compounded the problems of daily living.

For the Federal or Postal employee who is contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS, the added complexity of winding one’s way through a maze of bureaucracy, of compiling an effective legal case for one’s Federal Disability Retirement application, is often “too much” because such an effort is in addition to the burden of dealing with one’s debilitating medical condition.

The key is to always streamline and simplify; but of course, that’s precisely what society has been purportedly doing all of these years, with each new gadget declaring the end of stress; and we are all the more stimulated by it.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal and USPS Workers: Anonymity

The state of being nameless or faceless, of being unknown and yet surrounded by the greater populous, is a condition known as anonymity.  But being unknown or unidentified does not necessarily imply irrelevance or unimportance; for, often the state of anonymity is itself something which famous people seek and deliberately embrace.

Stories abound of the wealthy Howard Hughes who, in his eccentric later years, sought such a state of being; or of presidents past who attempted to become part of the crowd, until the Secret Service became overly dictatorial.  But for those who seek the opposite of anonymity, there is perhaps a partial explanation for the desire to plaster every personal detail on Facebook pages or to send texting images of that which should remain private and confidential.

For the Federal or Postal Worker who is seeking Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, the journey to seek an approval from a morass of thousands of similar applications, is tantamount to discovering a means of escaping anonymity.  For, one’s own Federal Disability Retirement application, lost in a stack of multiple similar such applications, must be properly identified, reviewed, evaluated, and hopefully approved.

Ultimately, if and when OPM finally gets to one’s particular case, the most effective way of avoiding anonymity is to have prepared, formulated, and compiled the best Federal Disability Retirement application possible.  That is when anonymity meets successful identification, and out of the faceless and nameless population, yours will be identified and presented with a return sought after:  an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: The Proper Endpoint

Matching the proper pairs of life’s “things” likely begins at an early age; it is a tool and ability which is perhaps developed, as opposed to an innate characteristic naturally existent like breathing or sleeping.  Have you ever come across someone who wears two different-colored socks?  And when the issue is inquired about, the response is:  “What’s wrong with that?  They match perfectly!”

Logic, sequential production, and causal connections do not necessarily arise from an innate sense of life; and that is precisely why Hume’s argument concerning the lack of a “necessary connection” between cause and effect, despite repeated observation of the same or similar circumstances, fails to give rise to an absolute confirmation of causality.

For the Federal or Postal Worker who is contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, however, it is necessary to understanding the strategic and logistical causal connections in preparing, formulating and filing for such benefits.  Thus, questions such as:  What is the endpoint? — is a necessary and important one.  By such a question, one will be forced to encounter the obvious and the not-so-obvious: Success and approval is the obvious; how to get there; what are the necessary elements to prove, etc. — are some of the basic “not-so-obvious” issues.

Even the logistical ones concerning endpoints:  Who to send the packet to, when, and within what timeframe?  Endpoints require answers involving preceding beginning points.  The ultimate answer prompts the intermediate questions.  While public display of different-colored socks may be somewhat inconsequential, properly preparing, formulating and filing a OPM Disability Retirement application may require greater tools than the ability to make color differentiations.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Ignorance and Coping

Within the complex world of information technology, modernity has reached a level of overload which few from past generations could have ever imagined. One needs only to peruse a Tom Swift novel to compare how far we have come; and even the old greats like Asimov and Bradbury could not have foreseen, in the height of their intellectual and creative powers, much of the technological gadgetry of the present age.

Then, of course, there is the “human side” of the equation of modern technology — of how individuals cope with such information overload.  Many have theorized that the exponential explosion of Major Depression, anxiety and panic attacks, and the societal impact of increased psychiatric disorders, stems from a response in terms of coping mechanisms; and we counter the response with advanced pharmaceutical admixtures.  The more common means employed to cope with the deluge of constant informational dissemination, is to limit the exposure to the volume of encounters.

Thus, the age-old adage of ignorance being a “blissful state” retains some semblance of truth.  But for those facing issues of legal limitations and filing deadlines, it is best to “be in the know”.

For Federal and Postal Workers intending upon filing for FERS Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the 1-year Statute of Limitations for filing applies from the time of separation from Federal Service.  Being on OWCP does not forestall or extend the 1-year rule. As such, once an SF 50 or a PS Form 50 is issued or, for Postal Workers, when those 0-balance pay stubs stop coming in the mail, it is well to be aware that the clock has begun to tick.

Ignorance can indeed be blissful, and being the gatekeeper of information overload may be a means of coping; but in the end, the inquisitiveness of Tom Swift must always prevail.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Gov. and USPS Disability Retirement: Overlapping Patchwork

When multiple hands work on a single project from different directions, the patchwork of designs may reveal the lack of coordination; yet, the beauty of the diversity in pattern, color, dimension and creativity may make up for such lack of uniformity.  Thus, lack of uniformity need not mean that the end-result lacks beauty; and, indeed, lack of conformity can in and of itself be a form of delicate attraction.

But human beings possess an innate desire for a sense of logical comprehension, and while overlapping patterns may possess a beauty of diversity, anarchical presentation of exploding colors and patterns must ultimately be brought together into some semblance of coordination.

There is, of course, a distinction to be made between art and mathematics; between artistic endeavors, which may bend the rules of uniformity, as opposed to a cohesive and comprehensible presentation in the form of a persuasive argument.  In law, an overlapping patchwork of arguments may unintentionally hit the mark; but you would not want to rely upon such an imprecise approach.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the approach of culling together a patchwork of arguments — borrowing a report from one’s OWCP doctor; arguing that because one received a percentage rating from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the relevance upon an OPM disability retirement application should be of X consequence; extrapolating language from an SSDI decision — while all of these are of some consequence, each must ultimately be garnered into a coherent whole.

It may well be that one’s Federal Disability Retirement application began as a patchwork of information; in the end, however, it should be the hand of a single artist who reworks the pattern into a cohesive whole.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Worker Disability Retirement: Proactive Development of a Case

The problem with medical conditions is that we tend to regard them passively, as recipients of service at a restaurant, or as victims of an automobile hit-and-run.  There is some limited truth to such a perspective; for, as medical conditions come upon us without notice or invitation, we are merely recipients of a condition of that which we never asked for nor desired. But once it becomes an existential fact, and one which becomes chronic and somewhat irreversible, then the subsequent methodology of what we do with the medical condition becomes the responsibility of the bearer of such bad news.

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition(s) prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, whether under FERS or CSRS, consideration must be given to filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Passivity in life will only engender magnification of inactivity; and as one must affirmatively prove by a preponderance of the evidence one’s Federal Disability Retirement case, sitting idly by as one’s agency takes steps to increase the penalties of unsatisfactory performance via leave restrictions, a PIP, suspensions, or other adverse actions, including removal from Federal Service, is simply an ineffective way of formulating and developing one’s Federal Disability Retirement case.

Case development requires a proactive stance; inactivity will only feed upon the devastating medical condition already suffered.  Being a victim of a disease or injury once is bad enough; let not the occurrence be magnified by compounding the problem through inactivity and passivity.

Sincerely, Robert R. McGill, Esquire