FERS Medical Retirement Law: The “EU” Prefix

Good; well; uttering sounds which portend of good omen; and of the root word of “euphemism”, it comes from the Greek word, “phemos”, or “speech”; or of the word, “Euthanasia”, the word after the “eu” is derived from the Greek root, “thanatos”, or death.

And thus do we alter and modify the very meaning of the words by attaching the prefix, “eu”, and turning a negative concept into a positive one: of speech which could be harmful or derisive, into an utterance of a more positive outlook; and of death — that ultimate end which portends of agony and pain  — into a painless sleep into that eternal darkness.  It is the prefix attached upon a word which can turn the negative into a positive.

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, preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under the current Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is tantamount to place the “eu” prefix onto your life and career, where the medical condition itself has become the negative impact upon your life and career, and where the “eu” prefix can turn that around and make it into a positive circumstance.

Contact an Federal Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of attaching a positive prefix onto a negative circumstance by become eligible for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

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: Peace in a Pause

That is what war is, and life in general; of constant and incessant stresses and conflicts, only to have a brief pause — and deem such a momentary respite as “peace”.  History, taken from a “macro” view, is an endless string of wars with peace as an interlude to break them into fragments.

And so it is in the private lives of most of us: A persistent, unending series of conflicts, only to have some peace in a pause.  The greater volume of our lives is taken up by a continuum of struggle — of work, with a respite on weekends; of marriage, with an interlude of beauty; of life, with periodic segments of happiness; and where only death is the ultimate peace in a pause of life’s misgivings.

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, the peace in a pause comes from some moments where one is either pain-free or where the stresses of the Federal or Postal job pauses on weekends.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is meant to allow for some peace in a pause.  Perhaps the medical condition will never go away. Perhaps the pain will always remain.  Nevertheless, Federal Disability Retirement is meant to allow for some time of rehabilitative peace.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, and look to find some peace in a pause.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement Application: Denials

They come in various forms; of self-denials representing a sacrifice in order to allow loved ones to reap the benefits; of denials meant to avoid the ugliness of reality; or of denials which prevent a person from entering a premises, advancing in a career or progressing in an endeavor.  Of whatever form or content, they leave the denied applicant a sense of disappointment, a temporary state of suspension and often a profound feeling of uncertainty.

Does one “give up” when a denial occurs?  Or, does one find an alternate route, a way to rebut and with a reenergized sense of purpose?

To be denied is to be defeated for a time; to be defeated is to give up entirely; but to avoid the finality of defeat, one must regroup and counterattack, in whatever form that may take.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition and who have been forced to file for FERS Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management by necessity of an unwanted medical condition — a denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is not the proverbial “end of the road”.  Rather, it is simply the beginning of the fight.  Who said that life’s pathways are easy?

Although OPM often makes it sound “as if” you never stood a chance, that your case was flawed to begin with or that there was never any validity to the claims you have made, that is simply their opinion on the matter.  What matters is whether your case has merit, and the merit of a case depends upon the laws governing FERS Disability Retirement Law.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and don’t let a denial automatically lead to a defeat; for, there is a reason why Federal Disability Retirement allows for various stages of appeals — precisely because a denial by OPM is not the end of the matter, but merely a beginning to the fight which must ensue.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Legal Representation on Federal Disability Retirement Claims: Plans

We all make them; whether for an anticipated journey or vacation; of a future date far in advance or nearby in time; or merely for an afternoon get-together with an associate, coworker, friend or family member — plans are essential to the coherence of a person’s daily life.

We have “planners” that we carry with us everywhere, and “planned vacations”, “planned playtime” for our kids; a “planned evening out” and meals planned well in advance even before our appetitive natures begin to rumble with echoes of hunger and delight.  There are “coordinated planned attacks” by terrorists, and “exit plans” before an assault is waged upon the enemy.  Then, there are life coaches who help to plan one’s future decisions, counselors who plan for college entrance exams and therapists who assist in planning this or that major decision.

From the moment we realized that simply reacting to the world around us was no longer an efficient methodology in maneuvering through a complex world, where the prey had become suspicious and did not stick around to remain as out next dinner course and predators began planning for counterstrategies to man’s wily peculiarities, we began to plan for the future.

However, the one thing that we have no plan for is the unexpected jolts of life’s servings that come upon one without warning or predictability, such as a deteriorating health condition that was never planned for.  Dreams that spawn plans are easily destroyed by life’s tumults that come in waves of unpredictable surges, just when we think that our “plans” are being realized.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition impacts and prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it may become necessary to alter one’s long-term plan and goal towards retiring upon reaching the “regular retirement age and time-in-service”, and instead to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Medical conditions are often the one set of goal-stopping issues that skewer one’s plans; it is normally unplanned for, and is a plan-modifier that requires not only a change of plans, but a new set of plans that should include a plan to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be planned for submission to OPM, and should also include a plan to seek to counsel and advice of an attorney who specializes in such planning.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: And then…

It is the precursor to the punch line, or perhaps the conclusion of a tale told with eyes wide with anticipation; what precedes, what follows, and then….  Stories are told well, middling, or perhaps badly, but they are told nonetheless, with conclusions that come about with surprise, aplomb or perhaps with a suspended yawn stifled for mere courtesy.  Everyone has one.  It is often said that the story of a man’s life is not in its conclusion, but in the living of it up to the end, but one wonders; is it the telling of it that matters, or the living of it?

In this day and age of technological openness, where everyone’s every detail is disseminated within moments of occurring, no one actually lives anymore, but merely by virtual existence.  Life is about what others think, about the opinions of likened friends, and how many “likes” have been amassed over a life-span of one’s presence upon social media.  The “telling” of one’s life has always been a part of the human makeup; cave-dwellers from long ago we were, and the drawings that have been left by ancestors long forgotten reveal the propensity and desire to tell tales — tall or otherwise — that also ended with, “And then…”

But this is a new phenomena; of telling the tale whilst living it, and sometimes even before; of setting up the “And then…” before the “then” even occurs, and well before the “And” makes its existence known.  It is a switch of a paradigm, a conversion of the psyche and a pre-consciousness before the ego bit off the Id of the seamless ego’s altercation with itself.  And then….

We know not what the outcome of such a story is.  Untested, unresearched, under constant attack; it remains the single mystery that yet needs to be told.  For, everyone has a tale to tell; a life to live; but the telling of the tale of one’s life was once the province of old men in rocking chairs who whispered to wide-eyed boys and girls of the feats of justice and generational transfers of heroic deeds left to folklore, old wive’s tales and exaggerated syllogisms lost in the conundrum of nightmares and sleepless ogres.  No more.  And then….

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the SF 3112A — Applicant’s Statement of Disability — provides the opportunity to tell the tale of one’s woeful conditions and worrisome progression of deteriorating circumstances.  The tale needs to be told; and like all tales, it needs to be presented with coherence and with a logical sequence of validity.

The problem with such telling of the tale of one’s medical condition, however, is the same problem that today’s generation faces: Of living the medical condition and yet telling of it, all in the same breath.  Too emotional, too involved or too whatever; in the bureaucracy and administrative complexity of presenting the tale to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the telling of one’s tale should be consolidated into an objective delineation in a clinical and legal admixture of complex simplicity.

For, like jokes and narrations that keep the attention of the reader and audience, there must always be the punchline that persuades and convinces, as in — And then…

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Separation and Retirement under FERS or CSRS: The nose beyond which

The human animal has reached a point of evolutionary pedigree where constant vigilance with the outside world is generally thought to be unnecessary; although, still when an individual walks through an unlit parking lot in the dead of night, the hairs which straighten and stand at attention on the nape of one’s neck would belie such an expression of civility amongst the savagery of newsworthy crimes printed daily.

Most of us live and walk about completely immersed within our own thoughts and reflections; and when encounters with the “outside” world suddenly jolt into an awareness just beyond, to focus upon the individual, event or incident which indicated a need for such engagement, the capacity to readjust and comprehend the alien nature imposed by a cacophony of sight, sound and a compound admixture of both, often confuses and torments.

Kant and Wittgenstein were correct in questioning the conventional views of a philosophical approach which wedded language to reality (to even combine both names into a single sentence is blasphemy, and an oxymoron of conceptual contradiction); the former, by proposing that there were human dimensions and constructs imposed upon an impervious universe of objectivity where the “thing-in-itself” bore little relation to how we perceive them; and the latter, by deconstructing the link between language and reality.

How we engage the world; what level of comprehension and understanding we bring to the fore; whether and what “success” we achieve in tackling the problems we face in a society that neither cares nor thinks about empathy and comity of human endeavor and suffering; the volume of questions posed and queried always surpasses the answers derived.  The nose beyond which we recognize is rarely embraced.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such a statement of truism is rarely denied.  Others fail to notice; the chasm between knowing that a medical condition is impacting a fellow worker, leaving aside the greater and universal perspective of a “fellow human being”, expands exponentially in a proportional widening defined by the intersection between title and pay grade, and the level of empathy lacking and sympathy non-existent.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who think that having a medical condition, after years and decades of loyal and dedicated service to the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, will automatically inspire a return of such vaunted conduct of responsive grace, become quickly and sorely disappointed and disillusioned.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the best option to take, if only for the sake of preserving one’s health, whether psychological, emotional or physical.

For, in the end, the nose beyond which a person may suddenly see, is that neighbor waving across the street, the lost child crying on the corner of the next block, the homeless person wandering the inner city desolation past the invisible lines of suburban sterility, and the infirm dilapidation of rotting humanity abandoned in old people’s homes which we euphemistically deem as “retirement communities“; and that which circles back to the Federal or Postal employee who remains unaccommodated by the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal worker, who must prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits because the shame of humanity has dissipated into an uncaring universe of ethereal space defined by an unperturbed imaginary deity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Frustrated Purposes

The linear attempt is the methodology of direct purpose; it is the measurement of length — of a straight line from point A to point B, of a one-dimensional character.  Any obstacle placed in its path represents a frustration of that purpose, and merely delays and obfuscates the attempt to accomplish a stated goal.

How to ad lib in circumstances where obstacles appear; the consideration of options and alternatives in the face of detours and unexpected deterrences; what malleability of core values must be shown when necessity arises; these are all challenges within a universe of expectations otherwise untested.

The hardest of these, of course, relates to deliberate attempts by outside forces to frustrate one’s purposes — whether by other people, coworkers, Supervisors, Managers, or perhaps even the microcosmic body politic of an organization or entity as a whole; or by circumstances otherwise unexpected, like a medical condition.  It is bad enough for one or the other to be the sole cause of turmoil; when both conspire jointly, they become a source of angst and agony.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal job or Postal position, it is that fight against both fronts simultaneously which becomes unbearable.

Not only must the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker contend against the challenges of the deteriorating medical condition, but concurrently, at every turn, the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service works day and night to seemingly frustrate the sincere attempts of the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker to return to a level of functionality such that the positional duties may be fulfilled and satisfactorily completed.

Thus does preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, become an important consideration in the delayed destination of frustrated purposes.

That linear sight of myopic perspective — of a career of accomplishments set over a lifetime, with retirement as a byproduct in a future destination and contribution to society as the groundwork of contentment — must be allowed to swerve, overcome and become a series of schizophrenic lines of zig-zagging spectrums, lest the frustration of purposes defeat the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Self-predication

Some people are uncomfortable in doing it; others relish the repetitive self-reference, enjoying the first-person attribution and the incessant pronouncement of the personal pronoun, the centrality of dramatic characterization every time the “I” is inserted; throughout, everyone recognizes that the identification of the “I” can never be fully expunged despite a heightened level of modesty or humility.

There is an artfulness to speaking about one’s self while at the same time making it appear as an objectification of the referential focus.  Talking about oneself; constantly inserting the self-attribution throughout a narrative; dominating every element of a conversation with self referential accolades; these can all be overwhelming, leaving aside the issue of being irritating.  But in some circumstances, such self attribution cannot be avoided.  There are times when we must talk about ourselves, but the manner of how it is done can be the difference between repetitive boredom and referential relevance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the requirement to prepare, formulate and file one’s Statement of Disability on Standard Form 3112A is something which must accompany every Federal Disability Retirement application. That is where one tells one’s “story” about the medical condition, the impact upon the ability to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties, and upon other and personal aspects of living.  Of course, self-reference and attribution of the personal pronoun must be used; but it is also a time and place where a prevailing sense of objectivity should be garnered, and where peripheral irrelevancies should be strictly limited and contained.

Concise brevity should guide one; reference to outside sources and medical evidence should be encapsulated; the story of centrality should be about the impact upon the personal “I”; and yet, throughout, the truth of the narrative should come out such that self-predication does not constitute self-promotion with an ulterior motive, but rather, that the universe of living beings has for a brief moment in time, allowed the spotlight of significance upon a singular entity who has dedicated him/herself to the mission of an agency, but where unforeseen circumstances of life beyond one’s control has necessitated the preparation, formulation and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire