FERS Medical Retirement: The Chance for Success

It is what everyone wants to know; we have all been accustomed to relying upon percentages — of probability theories from the likelihood of being struck by lightening to whether we will be attacked by a shark while swimming in the ocean (in both instances, of course, various factors come into play, as in: If you don’t venture into those circumstances which favor such calamities, the probability of such occurrences precipitously drops).

Or in the case of divorce, for example — Does including Elizabeth Taylor in the statistical analysis skewer the numbers— or those in Hollywood generally?

One can argue as to the accuracy of statistical analysis by questioning the data used, but we nevertheless seek assurance and find refuge in numbers, because of the impenetrable mysteries surrounding numerical certainties.  Math is a uniquely different language, and most of us struggle with comprehending its complexities while simultaneously defending its infallible status in the universe.

For Federal Gov. employees and U.S. Postal workers who have filed, or want to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, the question often posed is — What are the chances for success?  The answer, of course, is: It all depends upon the various factors underlying your own particular case.

However, one thing is quite certain: You must be prepared to fight for your case, a each and every stage of the process.  You must prepare an arsenal of weapons — not the least of which, includes the legal cases which favor and support your case.  It may be a self-evident proposition, but here goes: If you are not willing to fight aggressively against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, you will surely lose.

So, take this simple advice from an experienced lawyer: Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is not for the “faint of heart” and must be engaged in only with a view towards a “long and arduous slog”.

And as for the chance for success?  With the guidance of an experienced Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer, it can be exponentially enhanced.

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.

 

Postal & Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Day We Realized…

So much can follow the ellipsis; The day we realized we were not the most brilliant; that there are others who are smarter, better looking, more physically adept, more talented; that even given the half-century or so of time that we have been allotted on this earth, we will never become wealthy; that we aren’t any good at X, Y or Z; that our children are not the best-behaved little angels we once thought they were; and so much more.

Some such realizations are significant; others, with a shrug and a wink, we should just let pass.  For, of course there are others more talented; of course, most of us will never become wealthy; of course, most children are brats (but we can love them despite such realizations); and of course, there are others who are smarter and more attractive.

But then, there are those realizations which are of impactful consequences — such as when a Federal or Postal employee realizes that he or she has a medical condition which prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the positional duties slotted.

On that day of realization, another such realization should follow:  Contact and consult with a retirement attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest a further realization occur:  That you were unaware of certain laws which can defeat a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, through 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 Medical Retirement under FERS: The Silent Troll

OPM silently trolls the Internet.  You may not think that such activity poses a risk to you, but you should be fully aware of it.  By “troll” is not meant to include posting inflammatory remarks or initiating controversial discussions on the Web; rather, they silently and quietly view any postings and activities you may be involved in.  They will “spy” on your activities and use what is online as an argument to try and undermine and deny your Federal Disability Retirement application.

Thus, if you are a Postal worker, for example, and claim that you are unable to perform your physical duties as a Letter Carrier, Mail Handler, etc., but you have an Internet Web Page which claims that you are physically fit, a Facebook photo that shows you running a marathon, or a business that involves physical labor, etc., they will use your own postings against you.  Or, perhaps you are a Federal employee who can no longer perform a cognitive-intensive job, but have an Internet-based business as a consulting firm, or some similar work requiring cognitive-intensive work.  Guess what?  OPM may use that against you.

Of course, claims made on the Internet can be quite misleading.  For example, you may be a partner for an Internet-based business in “name only” — meaning that all of the work is done by a sibling or a close friend.  Or, it may be that the “self-pacing” element of running your own business is what allows you to have such an Internet-based business.  However, be that as it may, you should be aware that OPM is the Silent Troll who collects such information for a singular purpose: To deny your Federal Disability Retirement application.

Consult with a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin to safeguard a benefit which is your right to assert.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Does Anyone, Anymore?

Does anyone read poetry, anymore?  Does anyone ever talk to anyone else, anymore — face to face, outside of the medium of electronic devices?  Does anyone actually give his or her full time and attention, anymore?  Does anyone believe in anything, anymore?

As the pews of churches become emptied ever more each day; as people interact through Smartphones and other electronic devices exclusively; as the world of reality is ever more replaced by the virtual universe of language games no longer based upon the disjunctive between truth and falsity — one wonders whether the abandonment of poetry is a sign that human emotion and empathy is no longer evident in the soul of a civilization.

Reading poetry takes time; time that we no longer have.  Reading poetry takes patience; patience which can no longer be afforded.  Reading poetry requires the lull of cadence where voices and laughter commingle into a shared mirth of joyful sounds; and of which we have lost.

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 all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the question becomes: Does anyone, anymore?  Does anyone care, anymore?  Does anyone actually want to help, anymore?

Consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law and consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, lest the quest is answered in the negative and termination of employment becomes just another unanswered questionreverberating with the finality of, Does Anyone, Anymore?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The historical data

How much historical data is too much?  Is there a correlation between “too much” and “loss of interest”? In other words, when a history book is written, does the interest shown by the reader begin to wane when a certain point of quantitative overload begins to overwhelm?  Further, does the audience for whom the historical data is written depend upon the extent given?

Certainly, “popular” historical narratives provide “juicier” content than more “serious” biographies, where the salacious aspects of a person’s life or of an event are put to the fore, as opposed to relegating them to footnotes or in those “fine print” pages at the back of the book.

If, for example, data is compiled for an internal study for the “Historical Society of X”, then certain detailed information without limitations might be included — i.e. how many times this or that civilization went to war, went to the bathroom daily, ate one kind of fruit as opposed to another, etc. But if that “study” were to be made into a biography of an indigenous tribe, to be sold to the general public, it might leave out certain of the more uninteresting data, or placed in footnotes or “background notes” at the back of the book.

At what point does a historical narrative become “tedious”?  Again, is there a correlation between “interest shown/sparked/waning/losing” and the extent of data provided?  Is there a “qualitative” difference as opposed to sheer quantitative overload?

These issues are important to keep in mind when a Federal or Postal employee begins to write one’s narrative in response to questions posed on SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability.  For, there is always a tendency on the part of the Federal or Postal applicant to have this unquenchable desire to “tell one’s story”, as opposed to answering the question on SF 3112A in as precise, concise and incisive manner.

At times, some amount of historical background may be relevant and somewhat necessary, but unlike “internal studies” that have no cognizable consequences in providing “too much” information, an overabundance of irrelevant data provided may have a duality of negative results: First, it may take away from, and diminish, the “main point” of the narrative, and Second, you may be providing information that is inadvertently harmful to one’s OPM Disability Retirement case without intending to.

Remember always in a Federal Disability Retirement case, that the eyes that once see cannot be blinded after the fact, and it is better to provide information as a supplemental means in a Federal Disability Retirement case, than to have to explain, correct and amend after a denial is received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Sunshine, briefly

Life is mostly dark clouds, with a ray of sunshine briefly upon a small patch of wet grass.  Yes, yes – such a perspective is a mirror reflection of the conflict between the “half-full” versus “half-empty” outlook; but is it helpful for young people to posit a world view, a paradigm or, in the philosophical realm of ivory towers, that king of all royalties in linguistic sophistication that is dropped nonchalantly to impress and raise eyebrows –  Weltanschauung (since when did a German word rise to the level and replace Latin phrases, when one can barely clear one’s throat in enunciating such concepts?) – when reality doesn’t quite parallel such a fairytale ga-ga-land of fantasy reserved for bedtime stories and dream-filled comforts?

Do we not restrain children from engaging strangers?  Do we not warn of criminals, conmen and conspirators and step cautiously into dark alleys and isolated parks in twilight’s eyesight because the world lurks with malevolent intentions and evil thoughts?

There is no questions, of course, that there are periods of respite; of sunshine, briefly, by rays of telescopic precision warming for a time, before the inevitable clouds rub out the finite orientation of a limited gap emitting brightness of hope.  Is balance the stain of righteousness, and if so, where on the spectrum of both extremes does one draw the line of correctness, and is there a singularly myopic perspective where no other can claim moral equivalency?

Cynicism is attributable to the extreme of the “dark clouds” perspective, and naïve idealism to the other end of limitless sunshine; and somewhere in the middle is where reality protrudes into the conceptual realms of unease:  daily living, the encounters with meanness, harassment and unmitigated callousness that must endure the diminishing dereliction of youth’s untarnished cavity of hope.

It is, in the end, that ray of sunshine, however brief, that we live for, even if it only comes about once in a proverbial blue moon.  It is likened to the 80/20 rule:  Eighty percent of people you meet are not worthy of your time; it is the other 20% that you hope to encounter and engage; the identical proportion applies with work – much of it is monotonous and mindless repetition; it is for that remaining sliver that you do the treadmill stuff in order to apply the relishing technicality of challenging concerns.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the idea of life’s sunshine, however briefly, is precisely the point, isn’t it?

The medical condition that shortens one’s promising career is but the dark clouds which have gathered and overcast upon your life, career and ability and capacity to enjoy; Federal Disability Retirement – thought as “negative” in the sense that it replaces that which you worked so hard to attain – is that sunshine, briefly, so that you can go out with an annuity, a semblance of security, and focus upon the priorities of life:  Health, family, friends and tranquility.

Now, if that is not sunshine, however briefly, no one can fathom what is.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Urban decay and the relevance of rye

There is a reason why phoniness cannot survive or endure for long on a farm, as opposed to the urban decay of mass population centers; the animals won’t stand for it, and there is no one to be pretentious for, when hard work, sweat and toil replaces the incessant striving for acceptance, consumption and coercive condescensions.  It is not an accident that Caulfield spends his time in the decay of urban life, amongst people who display a duality of faces and concealed motives, while all the time dreaming of an imaginary existence in a field of rye, catching all of the children who may run astray in the innocence of their blinded youth.

It is because the pastoral settings of American lore have always had a fascination of timeless yearning; as only a few generations ago saw the destruction of most of human existence, before the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the desertion from rural countryside and mass migration from bank foreclosures and independence wrought and molded from self-sufficient living, so the age of modernity witnesses what the aggregation and amalgam of mass population intersection does to the soul of the individual.

Like the composite alloy which fails to fuse, the dental fillings crumble with time and decay by sheer inability to blend; the only means of survival is to pretend that all is well, that the ivory towers built, the emperor’s clothes which fail to fit, and the harmful toxicity which destroys — they all work, except behind closed doors in cubbyholes of private thoughts when the night no longer conceals and the truth of ugliness pushes to the forefront.

On a farm, or in the fields of rye where the crops must thrive and children may run in the innocence of their unpretentious exuberance, only the silent stares of barnyard animals look for judgment of purpose, and as pretending never gets the work done, so the need to put on a face of concealment does nothing but waste time and needless effort.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who witnesses the daily bifurcation between truth and reality, sincerity and concealed hostility, it is the openness of a medical condition which often breaks down the barriers of pretentiousness.  Suddenly, you become the target of meanness unspoken, of harassment barely veiled, and small-mindedness partially concealed.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, looked upon this way, is really no big deal when contrasted to what has occurred just before the act of filing; for, the sores which erupted and the boils that ruptured, were already seething beneath a mere veneer of civility, and the actual submission of a Federal Disability Retirement application is to bring out the obvious.

Whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the act of filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application —  first through one’s Human Resource Office of one’s own agency if the Federal or Postal employee is not separated from Federal Service or the U.S. Postal Service, or even if separated, for not more than 31 days; otherwise, if separated for 31 days or more, but less than 1 year, then directly to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — is to merely unveil the phoniness of niceties and civility engendered, but now to openly see whether the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service will remain true to its promise of non-discriminatory treatment of a Federal or Postal employee with an identified medical disability.

And like the job of the catcher in the rye who stands guard for those wayward children innocently running through the fields, oblivious of the lurking dangers just beyond in the urban decay of unconstrained emptiness, it is the lawyer who admonishes with the laws to enforce, which often prevents the weakness of the nets that fail to catch that heavy tumble over the cliff of a bureaucratic abyss.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset: To Lose a Kite

It is that loss of innocence; of a childhood cut and let go, a bifurcation of sorts, where the fluttering tail fades into the misty distance of time past, eternity unfulfilled, and the present moment shattered by a loss not valued by economic standards, but by the negation of that which was, will never be again, and won’t be coming back. The loss of anything is valued by the attachment of human passion, the trembling fear of future consequences known and yet to be determined, and the expectation of a hope left as a residue of hard work and toil.

Do we remember that loss of a kite, at a critical moment in time when the champion of winds clapped and cheered as we controlled the destiny of an artifice so flimsy in manufactured quality and yet defying the aerodynamic laws of the greater universe?  Neither the Law of Newtonian physics nor the quantum theories compromising Einstein’s theoretical constructs could defy the persistence of levitational determination, coupled with a coil of thread in the stubby little hands of a child, with but a tug and a pull; and then, suddenly, it was gone.

Is not the future of an adult like that fleeting moment? What a qualitative difference a day may make; when once free of pain, then to experience the excruciating agony of debilitating onset; or where rationality and promise set the course for future happiness, only to be overwhelmed by fear, anxiety, depression and panic attacks. Life is tough; but when a medical condition intervenes and tears apart the very fabric of living, that compromised life becomes almost an unbearable mesh of a twisted cathartic of impenetrable jungles of psychological, physical and emotional turmoils. For many, there is no escape, and that snap of a thin reed which left the child’s hand empty of promise, is all that remains.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have the minimum years of service under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is often the best — if not the only — recourse out of a madness undeterred. Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit accorded to all Federal and Postal employees as part of one’s compensation package, and allows a person to stop working, receive what amounts to a lifetime annuity, while accruing more years in building towards a final retirement converted from disability retirement to regular retirement at age 62; and all the while, to live upon that rehabilitative plateau in order to attend to one’s health and well-being.

For, when a Federal or Postal worker is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, the choices become stark and limited: To continue in pain and agony; to walk away with nothing to show for one’s efforts and toil; or to file for Federal Disability benefits.

It is like the child who once felt the pleasure of life through the flight of a kite, only to experience the tenuous reed of promise when the snap of the thread leaves the twirling object uncontrolled and uncontrollable, left to the nuances of turmoil and trauma; but to move on is to forge a different path, with the echoes of regret howling in the memories of our childhood consciousness, never to be regained but for a semblance of fated warmth.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Lawyer: Acrylic Acrimonies

It usually refers to paints, but is technically an acid used to form polymers, and may be mixed in order to manufacture compound elements for plastic and other synthetic products.  The second part of the short alliteration refers to the bitterness which develops when failure, or a perceived failure, begins to gnaw at the edges of sanity. The slow, incremental, eating away at a life of accomplishment and productivity, can come when once the self-discipline of setting insurmountable parameters has been ignored or otherwise untended.  Bitterness is a state of regret, reserved for old men and furies left uncontrolled.

Acrylic acrimonies, then, describes a state of being where a kaleidoscope of bursting colors coalesce with a temperament sharpened by disappointment.  Such conceptual compounds can be creatively presented, in order to provide a framework for a mellifluous flow of linguistic metaphor.  For, as sudden and unexpected events in a person’s life can cut short an expectation of future accomplishments yet to be realized, so acrylic acrimonies can provide a scented dye to a life once calm and collected.

Medical conditions tend to bring out the acrylic acrimonies festering below the surface of a calm aptitude of competence.  For, whatever diagnosis is ascribed to a given medical condition, the mystery of deterioration still scares us.  The turmoil that one must undergo when confronting a medical condition further exacerbates the state of disarray.  For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, it may be time 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.

The explosion of acrylic acrimonies may burst forth and be forever unconstrained, and thereby destructive beyond the intended beauty which color and paint should represent.  As red represents the color of anger, and blue the morose hue of anguish, so bitterness should remain a lonely stranger unfulfilled lest an artificial compound synthesizes forever a sense of disappointment in life.

Medical conditions can be traumatic; but the trauma of destruction through illness or disability can be somewhat ameliorated if one can reach a period of rehabilitation where the interruption of a career can become a plateau of peace.  Filing for Federal or Postal Disability Retirement benefits can allow for the beginning of a new phase in life.  Getting from the trauma of a medical condition to the receipt of an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is the goal to attain that level of peace.  Leave behind the acrylic acrimonies for others to step into; it’s not worth the price of the can of paint.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire