FERS Disability Retirement: The Law and Modernity

Recent Supreme Court decisions have, at the very least, engendered interest among the non-lawyer population of this country.  The concept of “stare decisis” — of the legal principle of determining points in litigation according to establish precedent — has been turned upside down and cast aside.  Is this a good thing?

Furthermore, there are now grumbles that recently-appointed justices “lied” to senators during their confirmation hearings, but no lawyer believes that such a charge can rise to the level of perjury.  Why?  Because if you ask a lawyer the question, “Do you agree that case-X is established law?” — the answer will always have 2 parts; first, the stated part: “Yes, it is established law and therefore should not be overturned.”

Then, the second, “unstated” and “silent” part — “Unless, of course, I find that when I am on the bench and a new case comes before me, that I find case-X to be unconstitutional, in which case I have no choice but to reverse and overturn the precedent.”

And so the law is as elastic as the best gymnasts qualifying for the Olympics.  Why the great hubbub?  Because society relies upon precedents, because precedents — whether you agree with them or not — provide a foundation of stability and reliability.

It would be as if a Federal Circuit Court Judge were to find all precedents on FERS Disability Retirement to be wrongly decided, and reversing every one of them.  Now, that would be a disaster.

Fortunately, that is unlikely to happen, and so, for Federal and Postal employees who have found it necessary to begin the process of initiating the Federal Disability Retirement application process, you may want to contact a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, where the Law and Modernity still rely upon the stability of stare decisis.

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 Retirement for Mental or Physical Incapacity: Liars

Do saints or angels exist?  That question necessarily implicates a further query: Are there beings in the universe who have never lied?

Of course, we do make the conceptual distinction between “a person who lies” and “a liar”.  The former refers to all of us; for, of whatever reasons justifying it or in defining the concept of a “lie”, we all must admit that we have engaged in the act at one time or another — unless, of course, we deem ourselves to be either an angel or a saint.  As for the latter — it refers to and implicates not a person who may lie every now and again, but rather one whose reputation is that of a chronically dishonest person.

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 problem of liars becomes an inherent, regular part of the Federal Disability Retirement process.  For some reason, Federal Agencies, Supervisors, managers, H.R. Representatives, etc. — all seem to engage in and bring out the worst within a context of lying.

Why such fervency of opposition, as if a person’s disability retirement application must be opposed, and therefore memories falter, resistance intensifies — is it because people simply do not like the idea of someone else gaining a benefit?

Whatever the reason, liars must be countered with the force of truth, and that is where a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer who has the experience of trial work, cross examination and articulation of legal argumentation is important to engage.  Contact an experienced Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer and prepare yourself to counter the lies that will surely come about, unless, of course, you believe that your Agency or Postal facility is full of saints and angels.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement for Federal & Postal Workers: Loneliness

The human condition is an entanglement with various emotions and encounters with stimuli responding to complex sets of reactive and involuntary states.  We create words to try and describe them, but are they adequate in representing such conditions?

Once overused, words tend to lose their efficacy.  We see it in news cycles where certain phrases, concepts, emotive words are repeated throughout a crisis or particular circumstance, and over time we become numb and immune to them.  “Loneliness” is a word/concept which is strange and foreign to many people.  This is supposedly a brave new world which has witnessed an explosion in social contexts through new technologies.  We are allegedly more “connected” with the “greater world” such that we have become a “global community”; and yet….

Medical conditions are often associated with loneliness.  It is an encounter which only the person impacted can fully understand.  When a Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker needs to file a Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the impact of a medical condition must be presented to OPM in a proper, effective manner, in order to potentially obtain an approval.

It is, indeed, a lonely process — because it is beyond the grasp and comprehension of all others, no matter how “connected” they may be.  Loneliness in the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS is a natural part of the process, and to counter that, you may want to consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer to blunt the loneliness part of the long, arduous and complex process.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Claims: The present preference

Given the choice, it is almost always the present preference that is chosen, while the long-term goals, aspirations or necessary planning are set aside, ignored, subverted or otherwise delayed for another day.  We prefer to remain in the present circumstances, in lieu of future contexts unknown, for the familiar is always to be preferred to the strange and unrelated.

The key to change away from the present preference is often based upon the spectrum of a “tolerance/intolerance” gauge — an informal, almost unspoken manner in which we react based upon various factors that have developed over many years: tolerance/intolerance of pain levels; quality of life issues, whether consciously realized or intuitively maintained; the balance between weekends encroached and the weekdays approached; whether productivity rises or falls; and other similar factors, both involving professional goals and aspirations as well as personal perspectives upon the worth of maintaining the status quo or allowing for the tumult of change.

Medical conditions often warrant a move away from the present preference.  In reality, no one “prefers” the present when the change is imposed from external sources, or where there is simply little control or influence to exert upon stopping, hindering or otherwise slowing down the change itself.  The present preference is merely borne of laziness or the pure enjoyment of non-change, as the known is almost always preferable to instability and the strangeness of other worlds.

That is why we take short vacations and jaunts to other cultural enclaves, but return home to the safety of our known environments.  But when a medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, as it can with Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the changes impacted from the external forces of an unwanted medical condition may necessitate the modification of the present preference for the status quo.

Living with a medical condition itself is traumatic enough; altering the present preference of a life one is used to, is almost always a further tumultuous necessity that one instinctively resists, but recognizes the inevitability of.

For Federal and Postal workers who have come to a point of realizing the necessity of modifying the present preference, preparing, formulating and filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is the first step towards conforming to an unfair external influence characterized by the medical condition itself.

Consulting an attorney who specializes in the administrative complexities inherent in the Federal Disability Retirement process will often help to buttress some of the changes that are necessary, if only because information and knowledge allows for the decision-making process to prevail with needed insights presented in order to adapt away from the present preference of an increasingly debilitating medical condition.

Sincerely,

Robert R.McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Persuasion

What does it mean to “persuade”?  Is it an outcome-based event?  Can one be “persuasive”, yet never persuade anyone to act upon a commitment made, perhaps verbally or with a nod of the head?  What of a person who everyone agrees makes the most persuasive arguments, turns everyone’s heads with accolades of “wow” and “boy!”, yet no one can find a single person who has been persuaded to change one’s mind or follow?

How about in battle – of that skinny little runt of a captain who nervously spoke, but who charged the troops up with great words and ideas and said, “Let’s go!”  But no one really was convinced to follow him because of his diminutive appearance and lack-of-self-confidence demeanor.  Contrast that to the big, hulking leader who never spoke much but, when he said something, people believed and followed him to the death – it wasn’t words that persuaded, but his very air of reliance, dependability and self-assurance of being right.

Thus, does “being persuasive” always have to do with logical thought processes, relationships between words, ideas and the reality of being – or, can it also include one’s tonality of voice, air of confidence and seeming self-righteousness?  Can one be persuaded by fear alone, or must there be a conceptual connection – a “belief” in something – that must accompany in order to be validly persuaded?

Can an army that is comprised of a loose connection of mercenaries persuaded only by money, looting potential and promises of riches be as fearsome (or more so) than one that believes in a “cause”, is rooted in discipline and love of country?  At what point does persuasion even come into play?  In other words, can a person be completely unpersuaded throughout the course of an argument, say, and then at the very end declare, “Okay, I’m convinced”, when no part of the final five minutes of the argument contained any basis for such a change of mind?  Is “being persuaded” merely a logical connection of rational argumentation, or is there some emotional element mixed therein?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering 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, the question of persuasion is an important one.

First, the Federal and Postal employee must be persuaded that filing for Federal Disability Retirement is a necessary next step.  Then, doctors must be persuaded to be supportive.  Further, legal and medical documentation must be provided which must contain persuasive evidence.  And finally, the evidence submitted must be compelling enough to persuade the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  Thus, whether fully logical, or containing some elements of the emotional, persuasion is an essential component of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Living versus being alive

There is a difference, is there not?  Of hummingbirds and cardinals bright against the backdrop of an evergreen; of a child running across the grassy knoll; then of aged men in nursing homes, shuttered away in corners where the drool of saliva unwiped reveals the tarnish of human unkindness; and of prisons rotting away with crowded cells for addicts whose sickness is considered a crime where, in ages past, opium dens and other vices merely preached in empty churches of the difference between mortal and venial sins unrehearsed.  Yet, we have somehow been duped into believing that “movement” is the basis of “living”, and its antonym, the lack thereof, constitutes something less than.

It is often when a medical condition overwhelms one with a debilitating illness, or a chronic state of pain; or, even of inconvenience in not being able to function as other “normal” people do, that it begins to “hit home”:  living is good; being alive, also, is worth it.  Perhaps the distinction is scoffed at by the healthy; as youth believes in the immortality and invincibility of foolhardiness, and often tests it to the detriment of failure and embarrassment, so wisdom may accompany an insight of some rather insignificant profundity – that we can boast well when everything is merely a hypothetical, as in ivory towers of university concepts, but we are all willing to compromise when the stark choices of life present themselves within limited contexts of concealed alternatives.

Being alive isn’t all that bad; living is preferable, but sometimes we have to accept the choices as presented by the reality of our unique and individualized circumstances.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition necessitates ending one’s career and shortening one’s desire for continuation in a chosen field, the recognition and admission as to the limitations imposed by one’s mortality, health and physical boundaries, as well as the impact of psychiatric conditions upon one’s ability to have the cognitive focus, concentration and attention to detail, will oftentimes require compromises that come close to the distinction noted – of living, versus being alive.

Perhaps the contrast has not swung in the pendulum of such extremes of options, but the feeling is certainly something that hits close to home.  For, continuation in the job will only further and progressively debilitate, such that you will come to a point of no return and end up simply being alive.  Living, as the preferable choice, is to take the steps in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, precisely in order to prevent that state of last option prior to the ultimate test of mortality’s humor – of merely being alive, as opposed to living.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement under FERS or CSRS: Clueless

We are, for the most part, clueless in most things.  Those very limited subjects of which we are deemed an “expert” or having some partial knowledge about, are merely one in a million, and so we walk around thinking highly of ourselves, yet clueless in 99.9% of everything else.

Fortunately, there is no criminal statute that can be imposed upon being clueless.  Life is complex enough without having to acknowledge that we walk about without any real idea as to how to tackle the problems; but as braggadocio wins the day for most people, most of the time, so long as the next guy believes that we know what we are doing, it counts for much of life’s conundrums.

Most people aren’t even barely competent in their chosen fields until they have been engulfed in the technicalities presented for 20 – 30 years; then, just when competence is assured, we are fired or otherwise dismissed summarily.  Knowledge and wisdom in this country is never valued; rather, the cult of youth, plastic surgery to extend the appearance of it, and the irrelevance reflected in casting aside those who have passed the halfway mark reveals much about this society.

That’s the problem with Federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service; they believe that Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers are essentially fungible goods, replaceable with youth or some other inexperienced and clueless individual.  Look at the entire issue of “accommodations” and Federal Disability Retirement law; agencies rarely put in the effort, other than a simple computer search to try and do a “match” between skill-sets and position descriptions (sort of like a corollary to internet dating sites), and the entire process and procedure reveals much about the value that Federal agencies and U.S. Postal workers place upon experience and wisdom.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering 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, the questions surrounding SF 3112D and the Agency’s efforts to reassign or otherwise “accommodate” the Federal or Postal employee’s medical disabilities, is a rather complex issue to explain in full.

Suffice it to say, however, that a truly viable, legally-acceptable accommodation rarely, if ever, happens, and therefore is almost never a roadblock to filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.  It is just another indication of how clueless even the Federal Agencies are, as well as the U.S. Postal Service; and as we all step into the general cauldron of cluelessness within the confines of a clueless universe, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application can serve to be an escape into the next phase of a clueless process.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Civil Service Disability Retirement: The value of properly preparing

Each and every stage of a Federal Disability Retirement process is important to view in the preparation of a Federal Disability Retirement application.  You cannot take any stage of the process in a vacuum; for example, answering SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, in and of itself forces one to consider stages beyond the Initial Stage of the process.

Questions to ask:  Are you bound by your answers without the possibility of further amendments to the narrative delineation you submit?  Can changes, amendments, additions be made even after a CSA/Case number is assigned by Boyers, Pennsylvania and sent on its way to Washington, D.C. for an initial assessment and determination by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management?  What if, in the meantime, a “new diagnosis” is provided, one which has not been included in the original Statement of Disability?

Should the language used in describing one’s medical conditions and the impact upon one’s positional duties and inability to perform the essential elements of one’s job be elastic enough to allow for greater content at a later date, or should it be concise, precise and without room for maneuver or wiggle?  To what extent will prioritizing of diagnosed descriptions be used, either for or against, one’s Federal Disability Retirement, and are there consequences in submitting a non-sequential order of non-prioritized conditions, whether in terms of a spectrum from severity of pain or relevance based upon conditions recognized to be “serious” as opposed to secondary, more exacerbated-based symptoms that are considered corollaries more than central conditions?

To view the world from a perspective of bifurcated and compartmentalized episodes, where each circumstance of life has no impact or connection to any other, results from the insularity of lives we lead.  But reality forces upon us the realization (note the close connection of the two words – reality and realization) that our own mental insularity does not impose a compelling argumentation upon the objective world; instead, we continue to delude ourselves into thinking one way, while the universe goes on and exists with impervious fortitude until the two contradict and ultimately clash.

For Federal employees and U.S. Post workers who try and defy the universe by ignoring the reality of preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application, and further, by attempting to sidestep the methodology of analytical determinations made by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the onus is on you:  take care that you consider preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application carefully and with full view as to the value of knowledge and information, lest it come back to haunt you with a denial because you did not foresee the burden of proof.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement Application: The tools we have for use

The foundation is always “all-important”; but there are other tools at one’s disposal, and the question is:  Do we know and recognize what those tools are, and if not, how can we use them out of ignorance?

How does SSDI intersect with FERS Disability retirement – not the issue of offsetting the concurrent payments after approval of each (that is merely a monetary calculation that has nothing to do with getting a FERS Disability Retirement application approved); rather, should an approval of an SSDI application have a legal impact upon a FERS Disability Retirement?  How about a denial – but one with a statement in the SSDI denial letter acknowledging that the FERS Disability Retirement applicant is unable to perform the duties of his current/former employment, but may be able to do “other employment”?

How should a mixed removal be utilized to its most effective manner?  If a person is removed partly for his or her medical inability to perform the essential functions of the job, but also because of AWOL issues or excessive LWOP usage, does it undermine the application and efficacy of a Bruner Presumption argument?

What should be done with a Department of Veterans Affairs rating?  Is it always persuasive, never determinative?  Even if persuasive, should it always be introduced, or is discretion the better part of valor – or, in the case of a FERS Disability Retirement application, the better part of value in using it as “proof” for a Federal Disability Retirement application?  Should medical documentation be indiscriminately submitted?

In other words, in a FERS Disability Retirement application, does the FERS Disability applicant have any rights as to dissemination of medical documentation, especially those portions which do not go to the substantive centrality of one’s claim in requesting a Federal Disability Retirement approval?  To what extent can the FERS Disability Retirement applicant and his/her attorney have the right to act as the “gatekeeper” in providing sensitive medical documentation to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management?

Tools – we have them; but of what use, efficacy or relevance are they, if they are left in reserve without pragmatic utilization?  And, as to the “reserve” – should the FERS Disability Retirement applicant keep in tow any of the tools, or should they all be used in an aggregate, cumulative powerhouse of aggressive and forceful argumentation?

Tools – to have them is one thing; to use, another; but more than that, to know what to use, when, how, and to what applicable relevance; that is the power behind the inertness of that which can be enlivened by knowledge, information and discretionary utilization.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire