Federal Disability Retirement: Cues and missteps

Throughout any process, there are both; whether we recognize them and adjust our actions accordingly, or like most of us, just blunder our way forward because we fail to recognize them as a result of arrogance or pride.

How many wars were fought because of cues unrecognized and missteps engaged?  And in society’s more personal wars — of friendships faltered or divorces filed — what cues are missed and what missteps are stumbled upon?

At work, when tempers flare and small fires erupt, were the metaphorical “peace-pipes” offered but failed to overcome because the cue was offered without the right verbiage?  Could a valuable employee have been kept if only some thoughtful time had been considered, where a health crisis lead to a misstep and feelings of pride were trampled upon?

In a divorce proceeding, if one or the other had declared the value of the love lost in the turmoil of raising kids, would a cue provided with a smile of sincere forgiveness dissipating regretful words once spoken out of anger — would it have warmed the cold heart and saved the kids from separation and anxiety?

Throughout every process, there are cues missed and missteps taken.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a health condition such that the health condition no longer allows you to continue in the chosen career of a Federal employee under FERS, the steps one takes before initiating a Federal Disability Retirement application under the FERS system are important.

Don’t miss the cues which need to be acknowledged in preparing for a FERS Disability Retirement, and don’t let the missteps undermine the endeavor.

It is best to contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest the cues missed and the missteps engaged make it more difficult to win an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Volume of Words

Modernity provokes a society of volume — volume of voices, volume of choices, volume of everything — even of words.  There are no “great words of fiction” in a neat little volume, like Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”; and the short story is a lost art, the last and greatest master of it being from Ireland (i.e., William Trevor).  The art of subtlety has vanished; the single sentence which evokes a plethora of thought and contentment, no longer available.

Volume of words does not replace content of substance — just listen to “talk radio” or the numerous shows on television and you will see that the goal is to “fill the void”, even if the “filler” has nothing substantive to say.  When have you ever heard someone say on a subject, “Oh, I have nothing to say about it because I haven’t given it much thought, yet”?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition and must consider preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, your Statement of Disability, the legal arguments you must make, and the medical documentation you must submit — all must rely upon the volume of words.

But such volume must also, by necessity in order to meet the legal criteria for eligibility under FERS Disability Retirement, be compiled and composed with precision, and not merely by a volume of words.  Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law, and recognize that the volume of words cannot ever replace the substance of content.

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.

 

Top-Rated Federal Disability Lawyer: Legal Containment

We have all seen it, or even experienced it first-hand.  A party; a gathering; a group of kids; a bunch of young boys and girls; the noise, the “showing off” and the language too obscene for nascent ears; then, an adult appears and, suddenly, miraculously and without anyone saying a word, the entire character of the crowd changes.

Boys sit up straight, feel around their waists to tuck their shirts in; girls make sure that they are a decent distance from the guy they were just a moment ago sprawled all over; the language is suddenly cleaned up, with serious tones of “yes, sir” and “no, sir” and formal designations prefatory in quiet demeanors; and so the party ends.

What happened?  What changed the character of the gathering?  Why did the mere approach and presence of an adult radically alter the character of the gathering?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition necessitates a filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Offie of Personnel Management, the lesson above should be a warning: OPM will often act like the unruly bunch of kids when a Federal Disability Retirement application is filed without legal representation.

Legal containment — a reserved, appropriate and serious response — occurs when the law hovers over the behavior of OPM.

Contact a FERS Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and make sure that the teenage gathering — OPM — is made to sit up straight and behave within the legal confines of the laws governing Federal Disability Retirement.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Reaching the Finish Line

It became the unspoken goal, sometime after a time unremembered.  In the beginning, perhaps, it was a job which was meant to be a steppingstone to another job in a career choice with obscure beginnings; but the promotions and step increases were forthcoming on a regular basis; the pace of work was acceptable, the accomplishments and accolades satisfying, and the colleagues that were once around provided a sense of stability.

Reaching the finish line was on the horizon — retirement.  Sometime when the halfway mark was passed, it became a logical goal.  But then a medical condition came into the scene, and the goal post suddenly seemed to have been extended that far back.

Federal Disability Retirement under FERS is merely an early accessing of one’s proverbial “finish line”, when reaching that retirement age and years of Federal Service are no longer viable as a result of a medical condition that prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law so that the finish line is still reachable, and the goals and dreams once set in the race to the end of one’s career are not suddenly dashed because of an unexpected medical condition.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

  

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The Variety Show of Life

It is never very predictable, and certainly not a monologue with a single voice conveying a logical sequence of events.  Life itself is more akin to a Variety Show — of singers in one moment, dancers in another; of solitary soliloquies by sometimes uninhabited corners, or a storyteller, then a story to be told; and discussions and accidents, or arguments and agonies.

The popularity of a Variety Show in its extravaganza of star-studded collections and unexpected appearances is an appropriate metaphor for the lives we live.  Whether by internal sufferings or external calamities, most people live lives that reflect the tumultuous bubbles of an unfolding drama.

Perhaps you believe your life to be mundane and monotonous; wait a while, and a calamity will uninvitedly appear at your doorstep, like the unwanted third cousin who pleads to stay with you based upon some suspicious blood-ties to a distant relative.  Or, maybe you believe that things are going wonderfully — until you find out that your spouse has been unfaithful, or your grown-up son or daughter has just done something that requires an emergency response.

Turmoil is often the norm and not the exception, and that is what makes of life a Variety Show.

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 Variety Show of Life is often dominated by the medical condition itself — whether psychiatric in nature or physical pain manifested by daily discomfort and lack of restorative sleep, matters not.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is an option that should be considered when the Variety Show of Life becomes a one-person act or event — like a medical condition that pervades ever corner of the stage.

Consult with an experienced attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and change the acts which comprise the Variety Show of Life before the curtains fall upon a stage that turns quiet with misery and lack of mirth, and the empty chairs echo of solitary clapping leading to deadening silence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation for OPM Disability Claims: The cluster of choices

Often, choices come in pairs, and the difficulty is in deciding between the binary alternatives offered.  Chocolate or vanilla?  Apple pie or cherry?  If taste were the sole determining factor, one can simply submit to the subliminal voices churning deep within the intestinal caverns of digestive tracts, and simply declare one as opposed to the other.  Of course, in such matters, one can “cheat”, and simply say to the host or hostess, “Oh, they both look so delicious, can I just have a small sliver of both?”

Why is it that if there are three or four to choose from, suddenly such a response shifts it into the category of gluttony, where people begin to look you up and down to see whether or not diet, exercise or lack of self-discipline is the problem?  Why is it, say, that there are various pies – apple, cherry, rhubarb and pumpkin, and you cannot choose between the four or more; is it okay to say at a dinner party, “Well, can I have a sliver of the apple and rhubarb”, but NOT to say, “Can I have a very small sliver of all four?” (or eight?) It is the cluster of choices that make for difficulties, almost in every sector of life.

Today, of course, the modernity of overload and the excessive, almost unlimited choices displayed, presented and given, makes for difficulties in the cognitive grey areas of the human mind.  Have human beings evolved sufficiently to be able to cope with such alternatives presented?

As a child, many decades ago, one remembers that the local “supermarket” merely had two, maybe three items on a shelf of any one product.  Ice cream shops had three or four flavors, and if there were five – well, we stood at the counter with amazed looks and couldn’t quite decide until Mom or Dad threatened to choose for us.

Does a lioness, or a cheetah, walk about through the wilds and come upon a herd of antelopes and pause because she cannot decide which one looks the most promising?  Or have the evolutionary stresses upon the fight to survive already determined the dominant characteristics that will prevail in such decision-making?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must decide when, how, and in what manner to file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, ultimately to be submitted through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the cluster of choices to choose from must be deliberative, with great seriousness, and with an approach that must look after one’s own best interests.

Often, however, because of the clouding of judgment wrought on resulting from one’s medical conditions – i.e., pain, profound fatigue, inability to focus and concentrate – it is difficult to separate between the cluster of choices given.  But Federal Disability Retirement requires a cogency of judgment, thought, decision-making and affirmation of choices, and in engaging this complex administrative process, it may be a good idea to consider consulting and hiring an experienced Federal Disability Retirement lawyer, in order to bifurcate between the cluster of choices presented, so that the best option and course of purposive actions can be embraced with a thoughtful and deliberative approach.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation for OPM Disability Claims: Life sensations

That’s a slice of the old stand-up routine, isn’t it?  Where the old man is asked about whether this or that hurts, or whether he can feel such-and-such sensation, and he declares, “At my age, I’m lucky to feel anything at all!”

Life sensations – it is too general a concept to retain any meaningful applicability.  Instead, we are merely satisfied with portions and slices – of a cramp that is rubbed away, a paper cut that heals and a sense of love for a child, a hug received or given to placate hurt feelings.  But what about the greater sensation of “life” in general – of living daily, of being overwhelmed with awe by that sense of mystery that living in this organic, enlivened world brings to the fore, or at least it did when you were a child, once with dreams and an imagination filled with hope for the future.

There were times when you tingled with excitement for this or that activity; of an anticipatory eagerness that filled your day the very moment you woke up; and the antsy sense that you needed to get to a certain age in order to accomplish this or that, and if not at that age or the age itself passed by without much notice, that there would arrive another milestone but none too quickly because life needed to be lived in the here and now and there was no time to lose.

Somehow, those life sensations became dulled; life itself became a constant struggle, a weight of burden that began to slowly, incrementally and almost imperceptibly deteriorate.  Then came the medical condition, and the sense that everything was always going to be a struggle.

Hope for the future is a necessary prerequisite for life sensations in the present, and for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are daily harassed by their Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service because they 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 position, it may be time to consider filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

All Federal Disability Retirement applications are ultimately filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and the waiting time itself is a daunting prospect.  But, in order to regain that lost coin of Life’s Sensations, where there is some hope left for a future yet to be secured, it may be time to begin preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, instead of waiting around for the Federal agency or the Postal Service to declare your “worth” by beginning termination proceedings with that same careless and indifferent attitude they have shown since first you began experiencing the life sensation of the medical condition that brought you to this point.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Paradoxes

Quine, probably the greatest logician since Bertrand Russell, notes that paradoxes often occur as a result of presumed beliefs otherwise left unstated, and once they are “fleshed out” through query and made explicit via closer scrutiny and analysis, the portion which befuddles often disappears.  Confusion within a language game, of course, is often a large part of it, and certain unstated preconditions and assumed facts otherwise implicit and hidden will leave the stated portion incomplete such that others must come along and unravel the mystery.

In a similar vein, statements made as “necessarily” so also retain unstated presumptions.  Thus, if we claim that “the sun will rise tomorrow”, we are asserting that it is “necessarily so”.  If a child asks, “Why is that so”, we will often revert to nothing more than Hume’s response that because it has always risen in the past, and the revolution of planets and rotation of the earth around the sun has been a reliable compass upon which we can depend, it is the regularity of events in the past that determine the necessary expectation of repetition for the future.

It is, then, those unstated or “hidden” presumptions that made certain statements and claims unclear, and the job of an attorney is to clarify that which is left in a muddle.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where it becomes necessary to file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the questions surrounding paradoxes and necessity can be important.

Medical conditions can certainly be paradoxes.  Without explanation, they can debilitate, progressively deteriorate and impact a person’s ability and capacity to continue on as before.  Even with a medical diagnosis, prescribed course of treatment and sometimes surgical intervention, they may remain a befuddlement because of a lack of knowledge or explanation.

Having such a medical condition may nevertheless require that the Federal or Postal employee file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits because the Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job.  The filing itself becomes a “necessity”.

The gap between the paradox of the medical condition and the necessity of filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes quite clear: Necessity does not equal entitlement, and the paradox must be proven.  In doing so, implicit facts must be explained and explicated, and more than an argument of “because it has always been so” will have to be put forward to persuade OPM of the viability of one’s case.

To that extent, do not allow for concealed and presumed “facts” to defeat your Federal Disability Retirement application, and never allow your statement of facts to remain a paradox, lest it become “necessary” to engage further steps of appealing the Federal Disability Retirement process in pursuance of an approval from OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Early Disability Retirement from Federal Employment: “Can” and “have to”

Does freedom allow and liberty mandate, or have the two concepts been conflated such that we envision a proverbial “free-for-all” in either and both instances?

Much of human history has been comprised of the latter – of Kantian obligatory categories imposed upon human behavior.  It is only of recent vintage that modernity has spurned the traditional categorical imperatives that wills the ought which spurs one to have to initiate, engage and complete activities despite a want of denial.  Today, the thought of “have to” is but a mere passing and flittering touch upon a calloused conscience no longer enlivened enough to compel movement, and “can” is the lie like the Marxist concept of the opiate that makes thoughtlessness the fog that is never lifted, and remains with the common man and the populous at large as the force of subservience throughout.

We are inculcated with the banal repetition of inane nonsense that we “can” do, be, reach anything and everything, and we don’t “have to” do anything that we do not want to.  Yet, concurrently, the implicit science of genetic predisposition dooms the concept of free will, and where once freedom meant something to slaves and their evil traders, and liberty required responsible sensitivity to the greater societal constraints that provide the foundation of a cohesive community, the current level of the combined, unfettered amalgamation – of freedom without restraint and liberty without responsibility – has brought us to the brink of a parallel universe with the history of Rome and its disintegrated empire.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition compels the Federal or Postal employee to “have to” file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, the clash of cultural historicity that we witness all around – of the simplistic tension between freedom and liberty, responsibility and obligation, and “may” and “ought”, comes to the fore because the Federal and Postal worker with a medical condition used to be in a state of “can” when it came to career, leisure, activities and unrestrained potentiality, but now replaced with “have to” because of the intervening forces of an unwelcomed medical condition.

Don’t fret about it; we are all part of a larger force of history; we just never realize it until the coalescence of fate, history, destiny and personal behavior come together, where “can” was never anything but a fiction, anyway, and “have to” was always part of the human dilemma cajoling the rebellious spirit to subvert that which we can never fully avoid – the touch of the gods upon our inner conscience.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Medical Retirement from Federal Government: The Run

Stockings and watercolors do it; time, with quietude and solace of a steady march, moving with predictable sequence like the consistency of a drumbeat; and, of course, the rhythm reminiscent of cardiac health, as do joggers and concerned citizens chasing down a purse snatcher to retrieve a possession of identity.  And life, too.

Sometimes, there is a good “run” of something — a lengthy period of calm and productivity, where all of the pistons of a complex and interactive mechanism akin to a turbo engine are firing away in tandem, and life is good, fruitful and positive.  But the inevitability of a breakdown can always be around the proverbial corner; a medical condition, suffered by a Federal or Postal employee, is not merely a stoppage of such a “run”, but can be a disruptive cacophony of ceaseless interruptions, both to career and to personal contentment.

The key is to get beyond, over, or around the obstacle which lands in the middle of one’s pathway for future well-being.  The child who fails to see the watercolors running; the invention of the stockings that never run; the life that seemingly runs smoothly; all, a perspective wrought at a price of neglect or deliberate ruse.  The fact is, life always has interruptions.

A medical condition can be a major one, and when it begins to prevent one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the Federal or Postal employee under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset may need to consider an alternate course and begin anew a run of a different sort.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is indeed a change of course.  It involves a complex bureaucratic strategy to get from point A to destination B, and the administrative obstacles are many, but not insurmountable.  And, like the verb itself, it provides many meanings for differing circumstances, but the one and central root of the process involves embracing the paradigm that life is never as easy as one thinks, and like the child who believes that he is the next Picasso in training, the run of the unpredictable always betrays the truth of our condition.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire