FERS Medical Retirement: Universes turned upside down

There are certain events that occur in life where the consequential results make it seem as if one’s universe has been turned upside down.  Even “positive ones” such as finding new employment, getting married, having a newborn — and not least of which, having a sudden, debilitating medical condition that impacts one’s ability and capacity to continue in one’s chosen career.

When such a catastrophic event occurs fortunately for Federal Gov. employees and U.S. Postal workers under FERS — Federal Disability Retirement is an option to be considered.

The benefits of a FERS Disability Retirement are numerous: It’s portability; the fact that you can make additional income on top of the annuity itself (thus allowing for a “second career”) — up to 80% of what your former position currently pays (in addition to the annuity payment which is calculated at 60% of the average of your highest-3 consecutive years of service for the first year, then 40-% every year thereafter until age 62, at which point the disability annuity gets recalculated as “regular retirement” based upon the total number of years accumulated, including the years on disability retirement – and so, you are actually building up a retirement system while you are on disability retirement).

It is a benefit which thus allows for some semblance of security to provide a cushion against that event which turns one’s universe upside down.  However, as with all such benefits, you must fight to secure it, and thus should contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal/Postal Disability Retirement Law.

The Law Offices of Robert R. McGill has been fighting on behalf of Federal and Postal employees for many years, and we have successfully secured that needed “cushion” for countless numbers of Federal and Postal workers.

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.

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Toughing it Out

That is what most of us do, because that is what we are expected to do.  It is a concept which is gender-neutral, in these days of modernity.  Yes, there was a time past, where the female species was given somewhat of a “pass” if she showed weakness or lack of endurance; that, somehow, and for whatever reason, our ancestors referred to women as the “weaker” gender.

No longer.  Women are just as capable (was there ever any doubt of that?); women are just as strong; women are just as X.  And so, the result is that women are also expected to “tough it out”.  Whatever the context of such an expectation, the problem with always trying to tough it out is that it can be a self-defeating proposition.  It is not always in one’s best interest to tough it out.

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, toughing it out may actually be harming your case.  Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether or not you might want to consider an exception to the societal expectation of always “toughing it out”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Federal Disability Lawyer

   

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Spam

If you remember eating it as a kid, it “dates” you — for, who in this day and age eats something that is singularly unhealthy, contains high levels of fats, calories and sodium, as well as unnamed preservatives?  On the other hand, the younger generation doesn’t blink an eye, and instead sees the word as a forgotten acronym for “junk email”, or otherwise known as “unsolicited commercial email”.

Are the two related?  Can there be a coincidence between a word which has two meanings or more, but contains some similarities and parallels?

Spam as a commercial yummy — oh, but of those memories when the can is first opened, of using that metal “key” where you insert the “thingie” and roll back the metal strip; and upon opening the can, the thick fat that surrounds in globs of hibernating hews of highlights hidden amidst the green shadows of delectable delights.  Spam as unsolicited commercial email — oh, but how that folder fills up so quickly, and yet do we nevertheless obsessively check each one “just in case” it was mistakenly misidentified and sent to the wrong folder?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who cross over generational lines — of whether you remember the word as the delectable blob of pork making its popularity entrance sometime after WWII, or of the “new” generation who makes the connection to unsolicited commercial emails — if a medical condition begins to prevent you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your job, you may want to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Spam is a reality of life; medical conditions, too, occur and become an unavoidable reality; and whether of either reality that uninvitedly intrudes upon your life, it the next step beyond that a person takes which is the important moment of actionable directions.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The Unique Writer

These days, writers are plentiful; more and more people are publishing, and while “self-publishing” has become more acceptable, even the quantity of people writing books, novels, narratives, biographies, autobiographical works, self-help books and allegedly adventuresome travelogues portending to unique experiences has exponentially exploded in our times.

Decades ago, there were only a handful of writers, and only the top-notch and exceptional ones actually got published.  Now, it seems that anyone and everyone who can articulate a string of three or more words — a noun, an adjective and a verb combined — can get published.  But we all know that in some desolate town in the Midwest there remains a warehouse where books unsold and unbought remain in molded stacks upon forgotten pallets where once-vaunted “bestsellers” became price-reduced, then slashed, then almost given away for free — until it became clear that no one was interested and even less people were persuaded of their merit.

Then, every now and again, the “unique writer” comes along, and we are again apprised of extraordinary talent and impressed with his or her articulateness, insightfulness and provocative profundity.

The unique writer is the one who is able to combine multiple characteristics: articulation with clarity; the capacity to simplify the complex; to convey clear and concise imagery; to hold the interest of the reader despite descriptions of the mundane; to not come off sounding pretentious and arrogant; and to remain anonymous behind a facade of competence — like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain — and, above all else, to show an interest in all things about life, living and the human experience.  In other words, to always hold a childlike quality of curiosity through the vast aggregate of verbiage expounded.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that filing for FERS Disability Retirement becomes a necessity, the first recognition to observe is that a Federal Employee Disability Retirement application is a “paper presentation” to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Make sure that, however you approach your case, you are able to convey properly, effectively and with forceful persuasiveness your case, your condition and your plight in a manner that will result in an approval, and consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney who is somewhat like that “unique writer” who can articulate and convey your conditions effectively.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire 
OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: The Bully and the Beast

Yes, yes, the title is all wrong; but that “other one” is for fairytales and childhood memories, and not for the ugly reality that is faced by grownups with the cynical perspective that, by age 30, has come to overwhelm and dominate.

“C’mon”, the refrain comes back, “let’s at least enjoy the childhood fantasies that still delight and enrapture the imagination, and quit being a spoil-sport!”  Yet, just as the idealistic twenty-something becomes a crotchety-old fifty-something, so the reality of the Beauty and the Beast — of the traditional story told in so many variations involving the beast that is of beauty beneath; of the nature of appearances as opposed to the substantive reality; of pithy sayings by parents who want to spare the feelings of their unattractive children that beauty is “only skin deep”; of higher academia where such childish notions then get transformed into “Platonic Forms” or the Aristotelian “substratum” — is the cold world that we all come to know.

Somewhere in one’s mid-thirties, the conclusion is reached that, No, the world is not reflected in the fairytale as recalled, but rather, the universe is occupied by the Bully and the Beast, and we are too often caught and trapped in the middle between the two.

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 — the “Bully” is too often represented by the Federal Agency or the Postal Service and its manner of treating a sick employee; and the “Beast” is the alternative — of the constant harassment; the reprimands; the adverse actions threatened or proposed; and perhaps even represented as the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the entire administrative nightmare known as “Federal Disability Retirement”.

For, once upon a time we were all children and dreamed about fairytales and fantasies; but somewhere along the way as we “grew up”, we came to realize that the world was not occupied by gnomes, goblins and cute hobbits scurrying about in the wild forests of our own imaginations, but by the ugly reality that the world is populated by people who are not very nice, and that sickness does sometimes hit the nicest of us, and oftentimes filing for Federal Disability Retirement is the best choice to make between the Bully and the Beast because the Beauty and the Beast had faded long ago into the warmth of childhood memories forever faded.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Dickens, Salinger & Capote, Continued…

One could easily spend a lifetime on each, separately; of the first in the trilogy, he mercifully died before the advent of the industrial revolution, whence he may have witnessed even greater upheavals of economic unrest and labor turmoil; of the latter two, they were contemporaries who followed divergent paths — with Salinger left in the hermitage of his insular world of fears, paranoia and distrust of a world which had offered only experiences which validated such churning for a tortured soul, and for Capote, a premature death prompted by a life of public destruction.

Today, we embrace the sophistication of paying strangers to listen to our meanderings of troubled psyches; for the three in question, the times for acceptance of such ways remained unkind and untested.

By standards of modernity, the childhood experiences of Dickens would have caught the attention of social services and the authorities in tow to save the poor boy; but then, we likely would never have had the pleasure of knowing his miscreant characters strewn throughout the ghettos of boundless imagination.  Of Salinger, who turned more towards mysticism in order to feed the slow withering of his wanting woes, the need to flee from the cruelty of the world resulted in the greater insularity protected only by the memories of his haunting past.  Of the three, it was Capote who openly laughed at the scorn of the world, and like the Clowns and Fools in Shakespearean tragedies, we watched as a major figure committed public seppuku in a slow and agonizing fashion.

They represent, unfortunately, the manner in which most of us live; either of haunted pasts and tortured presents, or of ongoing meanderings in troubled waters.  Then, when a medical condition hits the seemingly clean and linear timeline we live and embrace, the disruption becomes magnified with an even greater exponent of sorrow.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer because of a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positions, the need to file 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 becomes part of the tragedy of human life.

A life cut short is one which failed to be fulfilled; and, similarly, a career shortened is one which failed to accomplish its stated goals.

But, sometimes, it is of comfort and substantive contribution to see that others — even major figures like like Dickens, Salinger and Capote — had to endure the torture of life’s fated despair.  For, in the end, there is little dissimilar in the human essence of all three in relationship to the rest of us; each suffered, lived a life of fated misery, and had to “deal” with the cruelty of the world, thereby validating Hobbes’ description that man’s life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short…”

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Attorney Representation Federal Disability Retirement: Form and Content

The complexity of the administrative procedure generally identified as “OPM Disability Retirement” is one replete with complicated forms to complete, sequence of procedures which are often confusing, and content of conundrums, followed by wait times which are frustrating, at best.

The spectrum of problems and concerns which arise throughout the process can be daunting and overwhelming. For the Federal employee or the Postal worker who suffers from a chronic medical condition, such that chronic pain, profound fatigue, the high distractibility from pain and discomfort; the impact upon one’s focus, concentration, and capacity to be attentive; with features of variegated residuals from chronic migraine headaches; or perhaps the psychiatric impact of symptoms from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, Bipolar Disorder, etc. — the balance of life which one must maintain, with the demands of work or the loss of such capacity to work, combined with the added pressures inherent in the preparation and completion of a Federal Disability Retirement application, can in their compound aggregate, be paralyzing.

The Standard Forms themselves can be confusing, puzzling and the complexity of the requirements can have a procrastinating effect upon the Federal or Postal employee contemplating filing. The content of what needs to be stated, what should be included, what meets the legal requirement for eligibility for a Federal Disability Retirement application — all together can be the basis for a successful application or a failed endeavor from the start. Standard Form 3112 involves both the applicant (the Federal employee and the Postal worker) as well as the agency. SF 3107 (for those under FERS) and SF 2801 (for those under CSRS) also require involvement by both the agency and the applicant, but are more informational than perspective/opinion-oriented. But both sets of forms must be completed.

Form and content comprise the crux of everything in life, from simple organic compounds to complex bureaucratic procedures. It is the dualism which constitutes the core of life’s mysteries, and this is no less true in preparing, formulating and filing for FERS & CSRS disability retirement benefits through OPM, whether one is under FERS or CSRS.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire