CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: Insipience

The thread of differentiation and conceptual distinction can be based upon a mere sliver.  In practical life, pausing a moment because a person forgot his or her keys, can result in avoiding a chain of events terminating in causal calamities, merely because the time differentiation as a consequence of the slight delay allows for time to alter the historical ripples of cause and effect.

Words and conceptual distinctions can have similar minutiae of differentiations.  Linguistic gymnastics and elasticity aside, the word “insipience” conveys a meaning of being foolish and lacking of wisdom.  Changing a single consonant, and instead transforming the word into “incipience”, suddenly alters the concept into one encompassing origination and beginning stages.  Upon closer inspection, however, such a singular change of a consonant resulting in a radical alteration of meaning explodes with a recognition that the two are closely related: That which is in its beginning stages is often lacking of wisdom, precisely because little or no thought or reflection has been allowed.

That is precisely why the beginning stage of a process is so important — because it lays the foundation for all that follows. For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s job, the importance of beginning the sequential procedure of formulating an effective Federal Disability Retirement application cannot be overly stressed.

Federal Disability Retirement is a submission which is reviewed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS or CSRS.  As such, the reviewing process is accomplished be an agency separate and distinct (in most cases) from the one the Federal or Postal employee is employed by.  The early stages of formulation and preparation in a Federal Disability Retirement application will provide the necessary and important foundation for the successful outcome of a Federal Disability Retirement case.

It is thus the incipience of formulating and preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application, which will determine whether or not the outcome will be insipient, or not.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: What to Do

Whether or not one should hire an OPM Disability Attorney at the initial stage of the process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS, or whether to wait for a denial; such a question must be answered by each Federal or Postal employee, based upon the strength of a case, based upon the financial resources of the individual and the family, and based upon the ability of the potential applicant to organize, compile, streamline, delineate, communicate, descriptively convey, and methodologically argue the strength of a case.  Much of being able to successfully compile the multiple facets of a Federal or Postal Disability Retirement application depends upon the discretionary ability to make judgments about which aspects to emphasize and magnify; which aspects to de-emphasize; and (often) most importantly, which issues to “leave alone”. 

Whatever it is that one does in preparing a Federal or Postal Disability Retirement Application under FERS or CSRS, the “What to Do” list must always include what NOT to do.  Whatever it is that one does, one should do nothing that is going to negatively impact one’s application or case.  And, above all, remember that the person who “assumes” that the Federal Disability Retirement application will be approved at the first stage, and prepares such a packet, is often the person who regrets having said “this or that”, or wishes that “x, y or z” had not been included.  This is especially true when it gets denied the first time, and then the second time, and it is now being reviewed by an Administrative Judge.  On the other hand, I have found that there are few, if any, issues which are not ultimately “correctable” or able to be “explained away”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire