Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Descending Into

Whether into the arena of the devil’s playground or into insanity, the metaphor always seems to include a descent, and not its opposite, an ascent.  Why heaven is above and hell is below has been lost for its context and underlying meaning; the perspective of “up” as opposed to “down” must somehow be relevant, but science has certainly diminished the metaphorical significance by debunking any notions about time and place.

We now know that the sun does not “rise” and “set” in the rotational movement of the earth; that from the perspective of deep space, there is no “up” or “down”, and that our place within the universe is but a small, insignificant pinhole within the context of a greater universe.  But the human story, regardless of the cold perspective provided by science of an “objective” world, is that we descend into madness, descend into hell, and descend into chaos.

Language is a peculiar animal in this way; it uses its ordinary sense within a culturally relevant context, but when that context disappears or is no longer “alive”, the old manners of usage become an anomaly of puzzles.  Yet, even with its loss of cultural significance, “descending into” somehow maintains its appropriateness when it comes to mishaps, tragedies and difficulties.

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 position, descending into greater chaos and difficulties may be mitigated by preparing and filing an application for disability retirement.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of ascending towards another life beyond the Federal or Postal sector, thus preventing descending into a state of turmoil and possible termination.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Choices and Regrets

The two go hand-in-hand, although we may not necessarily see them as unalterable couplets forever ensconced and inseparable. Instead, we often make choices, then afterwards, express our regrets without having learned from the process of “choice-making”.

Choices available are often unanalyzed and nebulous; left to appear, remain inert and ignored; the “active” part of a “choice” is when we engage in the act of “choice-making” — of engaging our minds with an inactive but available “something” — a choice there, but lifeless until the activation of our choosing invigorates the inertia of indecision.

Regrets, on the other hand, are comprised by the dust of past choices made. Once settled, they remain in the hidden caverns of forgotten memories until, one day or hour, or moment of quietude when we have the time to reflect back, the unsettling of the dust collected is stirred and rises from the ashes, like the mythological Phoenix that appears with wings spread and ready for flight into our imagination and stabbing at the vulnerabilities of our inner soul.

We regret that which we have chosen; and like the past that haunts, such regrets are ever so painful when once we recall the choices available and the ones we made.

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 and position, the next steps taken — of choices being made in whether and how to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits — are important in determining whether regrets will follow.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest the choices to be made will result in regrets later recalled; for in the end, it is the choices that determine the future course of success, and not the regrets that harken back the past of lost opportunities.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Employees with Disabilities: Implicit and Explicit

Say a person is playing golf, hits the ball badly and yells out loudly, “Fore!”  In his mind, however, the individual has the word spelled wrongly — say, as “Four” or “For”, or any number of alternative ways.  When first heard, he had thought that it was spelled in the commonplace, conventional way.  Does it matter?  Doesn’t the fact that homophones exist become an issue of “right” or “wrong” only if the implicit clashes with the explicit? (What a terribly and awkwardly stated question).

Homophones not only “sound” the same, but may also be spelled differently.  They are in the “family” of homonyms because they sound alike but have different meanings; similarly, there are words that also sound the same, are spelled the same, but have different meanings, as in: “She rose from her seated position to smell the rose.”  Here again, what if the person repeated the sentence but thought that the first “rose” was somehow referring to the flower while the second rose concerned the manner of posture (if such transfer of meanings is even possible) — would it make a difference?

The “implicit” world of understanding encapsulates the privacy of our insular world; the “explicit” brings forth and unveils that previously-unrevealed universe, and tests it against the objective world of contending ideas.  It is somewhat akin to pain — that subjective phenomena which may or may not be capable of being ascertained, verified or confirmed by diagnostic testing or reactive muscle spasms.

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, it becomes necessary to make the “implicit” explicit in order to qualify for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  Gathering the necessary information in order to formulate properly one’s Federal Disability Retirement case is to make explicit that which may have remained deliberately implicit.

That is where consultation with an experienced attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law becomes crucial in properly making explicit that which remained implicit, in order to “test” the viability of a very private and confidential matter.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement: Life on Hold

There are periods in our lives when life is seemingly “on hold”.  Of times when we know not what to do; of careers that have hit a brick wall; of unhappiness over present circumstances; perhaps even of deteriorating family relationships that fail to reveal a glimmer of hope for improvement; and of a medical condition that becomes chronic with the realization that we must accept it, live with it, and endure the accompanying symptoms for a life-long struggle.

Filing for a Federal Disability Retirement benefit under FERS or CSRS, or even CSRS Offset (though rare are the latter two these days) is often a movement forward to break out of the mold of life being on hold.

When a Federal or Postal worker realizes that the medical condition suffered will simply not go away, and it prevents and continues to deteriorate in that aspect of preventing the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, that sense of being stuck in a “no-man’s land” is understandable.

From the Agency’s viewpoint, it is often a period where they are unsure of what to do with you.  They act with a timid sense of empathy (or perhaps none at all); they will sometimes be somewhat “supportive” of your plight; but in the end, you know that they will replace you with someone who can perform all of the essential elements of the position.

Life on hold is a time of uncertainty and trepidation; preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset is a movement forward; it allows for some certainty to be adjudicated in a world where everyone else seems to be in a mode of “fast-forward” while you are stuck in the timelessness of a deteriorating medical condition.

Life on Hold — it is a time when decisions need to be made, and for the Federal or Postal employee who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of his or her Federal or Postal job because of a medical condition, a time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The daunting process

Many Federal and Postal employees call an attorney for an initial legal consultation because of the “daunting process” involved in filing for Federal Disability Retirement.  And, indeed, the complex administrative process involved in preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application is a confounding, confusing and complicated process.

From the “how” of responding to the multiple questions on SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, to the quantity, volume and substance of “what” to include; to the issues surrounding what constitutes a viable and legal “accommodation” that may determine the truthfulness of a Supervisor’s Statement (SF 3112B) and Agency’s Efforts for Reassignment and Accommodation (SF 3112D); as well as peripheral issues that often intersect but may not necessarily impact or influence a Federal Disability Retirement application, to include (but not be limited to) EEO filings, a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) implementation, “Fitness for Duty” evaluations, OWCP/Department of Labor filings that may be concurrently initiated, as well as the reason, rationale and impact of a Social Security Disability filing, etc. — they are all relevant, significant and consequential issues that, in their aggregate compendium of concerns involved, both ancillary and some central to the primary concern of Federal Disability Retirement, should be analyzed, evaluated and considered carefully.

For any Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who is considering preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted (ultimately) to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the question of what to do with this “daunting process” can be allayed by first consulting with an attorney who is experienced in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and allowing the “daunting” part of the process to become nothing more than the squeaky mouse hidden in the corner that, before discovering the facts, once sounded like a burglar attempting to break in.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Retirement for Mental or Physical Incapacity: Problems

We all have them; some, more than others; and by either quality or quantity, we often judge as to the burdens overloaded in our lives, comparing to others by contrast the significance of the impact of each, whether large or small, tragic and grandiose or irrelevant like a speck of a fly upon a windowsill in the basement where no one visits, anyway.

Wait long enough and they will sometimes go away; wait too long, and the little bothersome inkling may turn into an insurmountable gargantuan of a magnified adversity beyond human tolerability; and in the end, we are left with either being resigned to live with them, to solve them, or to simply survive them.

Problems are inherent to human living.  A wise pastor once said, “Where there are people, there are problems.”  This statement was a recognition that human interactions, relationships and the mere bunching up of personalities that conflict and become adversarial, in a world of limited means but unlimited emotional upheaval, by necessity invites problematic encounters.

We often think that, “If only I had…” — then, what?  That all problems would simply vanish?  Hardly, and most unlikely.  For, history has shown that in every endeavor that requires effort; in every relationship no matter the matching of perfection as to personality, temperament and compatibility; in the end, whether by external influences or internal derangements, conflict will erupt and problems will abound.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to impact the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the necessity may arise for filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS offset.

In such a state of affairs, problems already are inherent — the medical condition itself.  The key, then, is not to compound the problem by trying to maneuver through a complex administrative process without legal expertise, but rather, to engage an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

In the end, it is the compounding of problems that can be controlled.  Problems will always be with us, but for the Federal or Postal employee who must contend with a medical condition and must file a Federal Disability Retirement application, always remember that it is the next step beyond the original problem that will often determine the future course of problems, and whether they can be limited or allowed to fester and boil over into a compounding of further problems.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer for OPM Disability Claims: The interrupted signature

The signature is the great identifier of a person.  It is, in some countries and cultures more than others, and even here in the United States, a feature that distinguishes, a type of rite of passage into adulthood, and in many ways a revealing characteristic.

It allows for the voluntary identification of a feature emanating from one’s own free will; an act which seals a compact; a stamp that distinguishes the person who completes the signature, from that of another; and declares to the world that this act, the signature stamp, with all of its unique swirls, crosses, dots and turnabouts, like some spinning basketball move that tells everyone else that you have arrived, is different, distinctive and peculiar to only the very individual who has picked up the pen at that moment in time and inked the singular characteristic upon a piece of paper.

Consistency in the written signature is important in establishing the uniqueness and distinctive feature; that, in and of itself, is a kind of oxymoron, is it not, when one pauses to reflect upon it?  For, to be “unique” and “singular” is to be a “one-time” event and a distinguishing peculiarity that cannot be reenacted or copied beyond the soliloquy of the act itself; and yet, for a signature to be effective, one must be able to repeat the same curves, the mimic again and again of the lines, crosses, dots, etc. of the signature hundreds of times over and thousands over a lifetime of signing one’s signature.

And then, once one has mastered the ability to sign one’s name in a unique, singular form, and be able to repeat it over and over again – have you ever notice how difficult it is to complete the interrupted signature?  It is as if the body itself is separated from the mind, and it is the hand and fingers that hold the pen that “remembers”, and not the eyes that guide or the brain that follows.  When once the flow of the signature has been interrupted, the uniqueness remember is suddenly forgotten.

It is likened to a Federal employee or 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 Federal or Postal job.  The medical condition intervenes and begins to interrupt, “preventing” one from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position that the person has been so uniquely qualified to do for so many years.

That is the insidiousness of a medical condition.  Such an interruption, however, is much more serious – for it doesn’t merely interrupt or impede the completion of a signature, but of a career, of goals, of family financial support, and every other aspect of a person’s life.

Preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is an important next step in taking up the proverbial pen and completing one’s signature.  And like the signature itself, the Federal or Postal employee need not fret about the uniqueness lost; you are still the same person, singular in every respect, whether your health has forced you to move on in life, no less than the signature that distinguishes you from all others.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: The Kokeshi doll

They are wooden dolls that are colorful, with expressions painted upon that remain frozen except for the change that naturally occurs when viewed from differing angles of sight, reflecting altered perspectives and modified vantage points depending upon one’s own emotions.  They sit on tabletops, shelves and can be a child’s playmate, though parents often view them more valuably as display items rather than taking the chance that the little brother may play them as reenactments of a prior war imagined to be fought by banging pieces of wood and throwing them against the yet-undamaged wall.

The heads are often disproportionately larger than the remainder of the body; and the rest and remainder, often just a block of smoothed wood with hands painted in a one-dimensional pattern, revealing no motion but straddling limply alongside the rectangular shape, like a submissive figure shuffling down life’s difficult trials in the daily struggles we all face.

The Kokeshi doll never complains, but always delights; never talks back, but eternally agrees; and never fails to bring light into a dark corner, but forever allows for a reminder that it is the trivial joys of life that make for worthwhile endurance in times of misgivings.  We are all, in many ways, expected to be like these inanimate objects that we have projected our own emotional well-being upon.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal employee’s job, the fact that you are no longer able to remain impassive, implacable, disaffected and unmoved by the manner in which the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service has begun to treat you, is not an extraordinary insight to possess and be suddenly enlightened by.

Though we may enjoy the delightful colorfulness of a Kokeshi doll, we cannot expect to be nor act like one.  It was always the productivity released, the competence revealed and the level of contribution inputted that made the Federal or Postal employee “valuable” to a Federal agency or a Postal facility; but when a medical condition hits a person, it is simply “not right” that the Federal agency or U.S. Postal Service should treat the Federal or Postal employee as merely another Kokeshi doll who should remain quiet and unperturbed standing in a corner.

Thus, when the Federal agency or Postal facility fails to treat the Federal or Postal employee as something more than the inanimate object a Kokeshi doll ultimately is, it may be time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, before that rough-and-tumble younger brother comes along and really begins to mistreat that block of wood.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Escaping reality

In some sense, everyone does it; in another, no one can.  For, in a general, generic meaning of the term, to “escape reality” is to merely engage in an activity that allows one to take a break from the ordinary and mundane, as in going to a movie, watching television, playing a video game or engaging a game of chess. In the same vein of meaning, however, one could argue that such leisurely pastimes constitute a reality no less real than working, dealing with life in other ways and attending to one’s daily duties and obligations – it is simply in a different “form”.

Daydreaming, getting lost in an imaginary world through reading a book, of even sleeping – these also constitute a form of “escaping reality”, if the term implies a narrow meaning manifesting the daily grind of work, family and surrounding obligations.  Going to school, surfing the internet or concocting plans for grandiose schemes – these, too, can be considered “escaping reality”, inasmuch as they do not put food on the table or pay bills; and thus do we face the reality that people possess different meanings when they make critical remarks that are triggered to demean an activity by making the charge that engaging in X is nothing more than an attempt to escape reality.

There are, of course, true escapes that are harmless, and those that, if entertained over too long a period of time, can become an entrenched harm that may be irreversible.  Taking a dream vacation to an isolated island deep in the Caribbean Isles can be a healthy escape from the daily reality of work and exhaustion; imagining a life different from one’s own, through a limited period of daydreaming, may be an acceptable form of transcending the turmoil of a day’s trial; but creating a world where one’s loved one, lost from the reality of this mortal world, is still present through one’s imagination and will of existence, may be considered a sickness when it begins to impede the ability and capacity to take care of one’s own needs.

There is a fine line between healthy escapes and detrimental plunges into the surreal world of the imagination.  How one takes upon the challenges of a medical condition is often a delicate teetering amidst the boundaries of health and unhealthiness.  We would all like to will away medical conditions, but the reality is that the real-ness of the injured, sick or otherwise deteriorating body, mind or both, cannot ultimately be avoided.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, the idea of preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application is often a step towards recognizing the reality that there is no curative power that will allow the Federal or Postal employee to continue to work in one’s chosen career, and that preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is merely a matter of inevitable time.

Delaying the process, procrastinating the preparatory steps, or avoiding the issue altogether – all are a form of escaping reality.  Whether such an escape is a healthy precursor to the reality which must be faced, only the Federal or Postal worker who is engaging such an escape can tell, as the reality of one’s future may rest upon the very escape afforded by filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Nascent knowledge

At what point does nascence become a maturity of device?  Is it linear time, or merely to exist within a pendulum of boredom where thoughts have moved on to other matters?  Youth, in general, is expected to engage in folly; but of nascent knowledge, where the appended concept of the latter connotes an established fact, a truism tested, and a hypothesis verified – but yet to be tested by time-worn principles and assimilated into the cauldron of society’s greater mixture of things working, defects allowable, and warts acknowledged as harmless.

For, newness itself should not be a basis for permanency of status, and as knowledge cannot be verified until tested, so nascent knowledge is the dangerous of all because it combines the defiance of dual categories:  Because it is new, it has not yet been tested; because it is “knowledge” unassimilated within the paradigms of commensurability like tectonic plates shifting to see what fits and what cannot be accommodated, so the lack of verification makes it that much more suspect.  Yet, we celebrate nascent knowledge “as if” the preceding announcement itself is as exciting as the introduction of a product advertised.

Don’t you miss those days of gangsters and badlands, when cell phones and close circuitry of images were missing, such that the detectives had to actually pursue the criminals?  Now, much of criminal investigation is reviewing of forensic evidence, and avoidance of conviction entails attacking the science of DNA analysis and the credentials of scientific application.

We have allowed for leaps and bounds over pauses of reflection, and never can we expect someone to evaluate and analyze an innovation and declare, “No, it just isn’t going to fit into the greater paradigm of our society”.  Why is that?  Is it because all souls are up for sale, and anything and everything that is deemed “new” becomes by definition that which is desirable and acceptable?  Or, is it merely a matter of economics, that the survival of a company or product is based upon the announcement of a more recent version, and vintage of merchandise is left for those with nostalgic tendencies, old fogies who lack the vibrancy of youth and the cult of newness?  That is, of course, where law and society clash; for, in law, the reliance upon constancy and precedent of legal opinions weigh heavily upon the judgment of current and future cases.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who needs to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the acceptance of nascent knowledge should include the medical condition, the current circumstances, and the present impact upon the Federal or Postal employee’s job elements.  But as to nascent knowledge involving cases past and statutory interpretations of yore?

Those are the very basis upon which law operates, and for which nascent knowledge is anything but a folly untried and unintended for future use.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire