FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Easing the Complex Process

Every Federal Disability Retirement is a “first” for every filer; or, even if it is the rare case of a person who attempted the process some years ago, was denied, and is attempting again to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS — even for that person, it will appear as if it is the “first time”.

The first time for anything is almost true of everything.  This is not like riding a bicycle, or driving a car, or coming home after work; you can’t gain any greater experience by “trying it out” a few times and then going for it as some “final phase”.

Instead, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is to engage and subject yourself to a complex administrative process which has multiple tentacles of responsibilities, all of which must be coordinated into a single application which effectively persuades an always-unwilling Federal Agency (i.e., the U.S. Office of Personnel Management) to grant a benefit which will effectively pay you a lifetime annuity/pension.

Easing the complex process is the job of an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  For the experienced Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer, it is not the “first” time, nor the tenth — yet, there is a recognition that each case is unique no matter what place in the sequence of cases he has represented.

Contact a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and ease the complex process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective case.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Attorney Representation for OPM Disability Claims: Shedding

It is nature’s way of getting rid of the old and replacing it with the new.  Sometimes, however, nature is slow in its processes and the environment surrounding doesn’t quite keep pace with the steady progress of unresponsive mechanisms — as in the horse’s winter coat that remains for weeks despite the sudden heat wave that overtakes the region.

There is the shedding brush that is often used for dogs and horses; the circular metal implement hastens the stubborn fur and hairs that remain despite the blazing heat wave that comes suddenly upon us; but perhaps nature is more attuned towards experiences in the vicissitudes of weather, waiting patiently, biding its time with a knowing smile that wintry days of the residue of cold and cool temperatures may yet follow upon a week of unseasonably warm temperatures, and maybe that’s why the unshed fur and follicles that remain are still clinging yet in order to make sure that summer is the real summer to stay, as opposed to those Indian summer days that wax and wane.

We are impatient in our response to the environment.  We want to rush ahead despite all of the warnings and signals that Nature lays before us — and so the stubborn clumps of winter coats cling desperately against the shedding brush that shears too soon.  It is our way of subverting nature regardless of what Nature is trying to tell us.  That is often what a medical condition does as well — of pain signaling our pace of recovery; of anxiety foretelling that it is too soon to return to the environment of stress; of nightmares and insomnia warning by expiating foreboding images within a stress-filled condition of life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition is preventing you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job, it may be time to begin shedding those factors which are contributing to your worsening health.

Perhaps the job was not the originating basis or reason for your medical condition; and, perhaps your Federal or Postal career was once a significant factor in your daily motivation to continue to strive each day.  However, when a medical condition becomes exacerbated by the very elements of the job, or there exists an inconsistency between your cognitive or physical capacity to perform all of the essential elements of the job, then it may be time to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Shedding is nature’s way of adapting to a changing environment; shedding is also an artificial means of recognizing the necessity for change, and when a medical condition is no longer consistent with the positional elements of a Federal or Postal job, it is time to consider shedding the job itself in order to regain the health that is nature’s priority, as it should be for you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Foggy glasses

Sometimes, we realize it at the outset and pause, take a moment to clean them, then proceed with the clarity we presupposed but were ineffectual in recognizing and correcting.  At other times, we stumble through the maze of reconditeness, failing to identify, or even to recognize, the source of our abstruseness.  Those who never need glasses, have but their imaginations to project a world of persistent perceptual perplexity; others must live with the unruly contraption encased ever so prominently upon the facial protrusion high atop the control center of one’s physique.

Of course, there are advertised surgical methods, or implantations of organic lenses upon the window of one’s soul (as Plato would describe it); but in the end, most defer to those convex lenses which provide for magnification, invented sometime during the Dark Ages and before.  But clarity of perceptual comprehension, if merely a physical defect, is at least correctible; whereas most walk through life with foggy glasses of another sort, and have greater and more dire consequences resulting therefrom.

That is precisely the problem with wisdom, or the lack thereof, but more accurately, the means to attain it.  It is one thing to walk about with foggy thoughts; another altogether, to never be able to recognize it.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are caught in a quandary of the frozen steppes of indecision, where a medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, and therefore one’s status as a Federal employee or Postal worker is likened to a purgatory awaiting further harassment, being forced to work with one’s medical condition despite every medical advice to the contrary, or worse, merely waiting to be fired — the time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is “now”, or perhaps even yesterday.

But if one is unable to have the perceptual clarity needed to arrive at a judgment of insight, how is one to proceed?

Advice is plentiful, as is information of irrelevance; but first, to even wake up to the most basic needs and address the elementary concerns for securing one’s legal rights, future prospects, and a promise for advancement beyond the present condition of malaise, it is necessary to wipe away one’s foggy glasses, and view the world with a level of perceptual clarity beyond the confusion ensconced in the belief that the obstacle that stops us is not a mountain to climb, but one’s own nose obscured by the device so prominently placed.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Lawyer: Life’s Series of Decisions

As activity is the fingerprint of life, and inertia denotes death (or at least a somnolence of sluggishness), so the parallelism between thought and life follows the logic of movement versus progressive decomposition.  Thinking, according to Aristotelian tradition, constitutes the essence of human-ness.  Other species may have characteristics which define and distinguish; for the human animal, it is the process of thinking, or thought-engagement, which differentiates and identifies by uniqueness of quality.  Part of that cognitive process involves decision-making.

For all species, this cannot be the essence of being, because such a principle applies to every genus, lest we conclude that determinism is ingrained in one’s DNA.  Predators must decide when and upon what the advantage of a chase will result; frogs must affirmatively choose when to snap that elongated tongue in the split second of time to satisfy its appetite; and men and women must resolve issues short of confrontations engaged in a prior state of nature, to confirm that civilization is indeed a progression of culture and sophistication, and not based upon brute force.

The underlying principles, then, which distinguishes human decision-making from other species, must be some other component; perhaps that of the formulation of a paradigmatic criteria upon which an option is considered.

In the process of thoughtful decision-making, what criteria do we apply?  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Employee Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the criteria-based paradigm of choice-making may be limited:  You can remain within the inertia of present circumstances; you can walk away in order to “save” your health, while also partly engaging in the first option (i.e., change into the inertia of a different set of circumstances); or, you can file for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits.

If the third alternative is the one opted for, then a series of additional questions and answers must be posed and resolved:  How many years of Federal Service; how long will the process take; what are the chances of success; will my doctor support me in this endeavor; and multiple other queries.  For some of these, further research and investigation will provide the answers; for others, seeking legal counsel, expert advice and general wisdom of experience will be helpful.

In the end, inertia should be disengaged, as lifelessness should never define the essence of a living being; and the thoughtless void which modern society and technological dominance tends to cower us all into, should be pushed back and resisted, like the days of yore of Masada and other uprisings which manifest the destiny of humanity, that life on any planet, Mars or Earth, is indeed a rarity even among a plenitude of apparent activity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire