Medical Retirement under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS): Money

We all groan about it (well, perhaps there does exist a 1% who never worries about it).  We complain and moan.  There is never enough.  When an unexpected amount is received, it provides a momentary thrill.

Idealists bemoan it but recognize its transactional necessity in an economy no longer viable in bartering terms; talking heads who self-proclaim to be “financial experts” (whatever species of animals they are, no one knows) talk about value, worth, “printing too much”, “pumping” too little, etc., leaving us all confused.  In the end, it is always a matter of, “How much”.

For Federal Employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition necessitates filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from OPM, the question of “how much” is a simple calculus of receiving 60% of the average of one’s highest-3 consecutive years of Federal Service for the first year, then 40% every year thereafter until age 62, at which point the annuity gets recalculated based upon the total number of years of service when you reach age 62, including the time that you are on disability retirement.

Thus, you are actually “building up” your regular retirement by being on disability retirement, as those years you are on disability retirement count towards your total number of years of service when recalculated at age 62.

Imagine that — you receive an annuity (money) while on disability retirement, and at the same time, you are building up your retirement system so that, when you turn age 62, those years you were on disability retirement are calculated and added on to the years of Federal Service you had before you went on disability retirement.  It is money well earned and deserved.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Pleasure & the ascetic

The two concepts are often thought to be antithetical, from opposing philosophical frameworks and inconsistent in their expending of energies to achieve.  Of the latter, it connotes self-discipline and an aversion, if not outright refusal and avoidance, of any indulgences that are implied by the former.  The former, of course, is what most of us strive for — if not openly, then surreptitiously while denying that it is one’s singular goal.

Pleasure in its excesses can be harmful, of course, just as too much of anything can lead to self-immolation through abundance and gluttony.  Both, however, have something in common: they are like two sides of the same coin, where life doesn’t allow for the existence of one without the recognition of the other.

Thus: Being cannot be distinguished without Nothingness (e.g., it is because there is the “nothingness” of space between the bookshelf and the wall that you can differentiate between the two entities); life cannot be identified without its opposite —death, or inertness; wealth is created in contradistinction to poverty, or lack thereof; a smile can be recognized, but so can a frown; and so forth and so on.

What the ascetic fails to realize is that the extreme of self-indulgence in striving for pleasurable activities need not be the only methodology of interacting with this world; there are more moderate ways of living than the pure rejection of all pleasure.  Conversely, the one who strives only for pleasure — i.e., pleasure as the sole motivator in one’s life and goal-seeking — fails to realize that its corollary — pain — is a necessary posit, and if not rearing its ugly head presently, will do so sometime in the near future.

Pain is an existential reality of life, just as pleasure is the rare interlude that we all seek, and it is the ascetic who has realized that life’s pleasurable moments will often follow with a period of pain, as the reason why some seek to limit the pain by denying all pleasure.  That is why monastic orders come into being, and why Zen Buddhism founds its roots in the denial of reality in order to deal with pain — all because pleasure could not be ultimately achieved without the pain that accompanies.

That is the reality that Federal and Postal employees come to realize when a medical condition begins to prevent one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  Suddenly, those “pleasures” that were once taken for granted — of a health body; of a mind that has focus, concentration, and mental acuity to multi-task on a daily, sustained basis — begin to wither and wane.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective 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, may become a necessity, and when one is forced to take that necessary step, it may be a good idea to consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

For, in the end, neither pleasure nor the ascetic have grasped the true point of living a worthwhile life; as worth is determined by the priorities ones sets in the course of existing, one’s health should thus be a major element to achieve within every web of goals set, whether in striving for pleasure or regarding the ascetic who renounced it for the sake of a mistaken belief.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS: In the end…

What is it about a phrase that predictably tells us about the mood, content or direction of the mindset?  If a person begins with, “Well, it all began when…” — we will often stifle a yawn, try to make excuses and begin heading for the exits.  Self-aggrandizing, prefatory remarks that set the stage for a narrative delineation that includes private details of individual lives often bore the pants off of most people, and yet many will “tell all”, as if such intimate details trigger a prurient interest within each of us.

Then, of course, there is the opposite, as in: “In the end…”.  What fills in the ellipses?  In the end…the world will all go to the trash bin of history’s footnotes; In the end…we all die, anyway?  Such opening phrases and closing remarks leave out the vast chasm of filling in “the middle”, of course.  How does a story begin, tell the narrative in an interesting manner in “the middle” and end with a bang?  That is the problem, isn’t it?  Most of us don’t have a clue as to how to tell an interesting tale.

And what about non-fiction — of a historical narrative or of a biography?  What makes for an interesting “telling” of it — of what details of a person’s life; what incidents should be included?  What peripheral, tangential details will make for an interesting and engaging read?  Is a biography incomplete if the author leaves out certain details, or does it matter?  What “events” are presumed and should therefore be excluded, and can it really be said that certain excluded moments are considered to be excluded at all?

For example, it is presumed that a person goes to the bathroom a few times a day, at least — but what if, during the narrative of a biography or a historical period, such activities are never mentioned?  Can we call up the author and demand to know why such historical “facts” were excluded from the biography of, say, an important figure?

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, it may be necessary to begin to formulate 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.

As part of that “administrative process”, it is necessary to complete SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability.

In preparing the narrative story of one’s medical condition, it is important to convey the essential “story” — a historical account; a prefatory introduction; a “middle”; and an “In the end…”.

What details to include; the choice of words; whether in the first-person or 3rd-person narrative; of what legal arguments to include; whether to “exclude” certain details without being charged with “falsifying” a claim, etc. — these are all important considerations in the proper, complete and sufficient preparation, formulation and filing of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, and it is vitally important to do it “the right way” when preparing SF 3112A — the core and essence of a FERS Disability Retirement claim — which, in the end, is the story of your tale that needs to be told.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Legal Representation OPM Disability Retirement: A good turn

At what point does a “good” turn transform into a negative?  Can one help so much so that dependency becomes the habit and negates the “goodness” that was once always a part of the deed?  Isn’t “going to work” a “good” thing?  When does it turn bad?  Is there ever a point where the quality of X becomes diluted so much so by the quantitative increase of the primary identifying ingredient of X to where the essence of X becomes negative-X because of too much X within X?  Can there be, in the simplest of terms, too much goodness where goodness itself turns bad because of the overwhelming goodness involved?  Why is it that the following syllogism doesn’t quite work, and where is the fallacy involved?

Water is a necessary component for life
Life requires water in abundance in order to survive
Therefore, the more water, the greater abundance of life

But we all know that consuming too much water can kill a person.  And, isn’t that the complaint that we have in almost all aspects of living — that we come back to Aristotle’s essential wisdom that there is a “mean” or a “middle ground” of moderation where the extremes on either sides — neither too much nor too little — is the balance in the life that one should always strive for.

That is the basic component of happiness reduced to its pure essentials: of the porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold, but “just right”; of leisure time that relaxes but doesn’t rob from sustained periods of productivity; of a nap that satisfies but doesn’t make one groggy; and of entertainment that borders just to the edge of credibility but stays within the boundaries of allowing one to suspend disbelief, such that one can enjoy it without sighing, turning to a loved one and declaring, “That just isn’t believable.”

But where technology comes into our lives, perhaps we have come to a saturation point where we no longer believe that the “next new innovation” is going to save us any more time or enhance the quality of our lives anymore than the last version of our Smart Phone give us the promise of nirvana that we all stand in long lines to attain.  And so the question again turns full circle: When does a “good” turn into a negative?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers whose medical conditions have come to a point where it prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position, the vicious circularity of the circumstances makes it into a paradigm where a good turns into a negative: Coming to work exacerbates the medical condition; the stress of being unable to perform the full essential elements of the Federal or Postal job further increases the stress; the Agency or the Postal facility begins to turn upon the Federal or Postal employee; and the job itself — once one of the many “good” things in life — now becomes a detriment and a negative.

It is then time to consider preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and thus turning that which was once a “good” but had transformed into a negative, back into a good turn.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Attorney: Uncharacteristic Behavior

It is the clash between an expectation and the actualization of an encounter, which determines one’s perspective of self-fulfillment of a belief, or a resulting dismay from failure of verifying the basis of a paradigm.  Characteristic behavior is thus that type of human encounter which meets with, or exceeds, one’s predetermined paradigm of what one has already believed to be so; to act out of that previously considered belief system, by definition makes it fall outside of the realm of such expectation.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker, the bureaucratic complexity of the entire administrative process of preparing, formulating and 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, is normally not a surprise, and meets with or even exceeds, the expectation of an already-formed paradigm of what constitutes the “characteristic behavior” of the system as a whole.

It is the anomaly of the century when efficiency, helpfulness and pleasantries prevail throughout the process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, where one hears with surprise and shock that it was “uncharacteristic”.  Sadly, that tells us something.  While somewhat unfortunate, we must always remember that the road of every bureaucratic process is paved with personalities of every type.  We tend to lump the entirety of an administrative process into a single cup and cauldron of judgment, but the reality is that there are multiple categories, just as there are different types of people throughout the universe, distinctly compartmentalized into:  helpful; friendly; efficient; nasty; backstabber; fair; unfair; loyal; unpredictable; just to name a few.

The process of filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM can be a stressful one, if only because it is based upon an obvious stressor to begin with:  a medical condition which impacts one’s ability to perform one’s Federal or Postal job.  But it is not the bureaucratic process itself which adds or detracts from the inherent complexities of the process, but the behavior — characteristic or not — of those who must help along the way or hinder the necessary transition of the Federal or Postal employee, from one of active Federal or Postal employee to that of disability annuitant.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The Chasm Between Sanity and Twilight

Sometimes, there are moments of clarity where one is left with wonderment at the behavioral folly of individuals, organizations, and groups of collective consciousnesses (what an untenable word — the pluralization of that which ends in what appears to be the plural form of the noun).  Whether one agrees with the Supreme Court’s holding that corporations should be treated as “persons”, the fact is that organizations act in collective aggregates in similar manners as individuals and amoebas.

Group-think, herd mentality and symbiotic consciousness of behavior is not unfamiliar to us all; for Federal and Postal employees who suffer from an injury or disability, and where the medical condition leads the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker to file for Federal/Postal Medical Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether that Federal worker or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it is a fairly routine matter that engagement with one’s agency can be characterized as one of workplace hostility, unpleasantness or unfriendly separation.

Why this is so; what bonds of loyalty become severed merely because the Federal or Postal employee expresses an intent to terminate the employment relationship as a consequence of the onset and intervention of a injury or chronic condition; and how the contextual animosity develops into a flashpoint where the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service believes that it must initiate adverse actions or punitive measures; these are all wrapped up within the conundrum of complexities which characterize the human condition, and that is why organizations and organic aggregates of individuals comprise a compendium of human behavior.

It is, in the end, an unexplained and incomprehensible phenomena; what it is; how it can be explained; where one goes to for enlightenment; these questions must be relegated to the dark corners of behavioral recesses within those chasms between sanity and twilight.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: Preemptive Actions

Knowledge can be a dangerous commodity; partial, or little knowledge, can be all the more damaging, precisely because actions can result based upon incomplete information and slices of factually curtailed composites.

The Court of the Appeals for the Federal Circuit has previously pointed out one of the methodological deficiencies engaged in by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in its review and determination of Federal Disability Retirement cases:  of focusing upon that which is not included in a Federal Disability Retirement application, as opposed to reviewing the information of what has been received.

Such a distinction may be a subtle one, and a difference which can be easily overlooked, but it reveals much more than mere word-play.  For, what it manifests is an application of a criteria based upon an erroneous assumption, and one which continues to be applied to this day, despite case-law which admonishes OPM to the contrary.

Vanieken-Ryals v. OPM, a 2007 Federal Court of Appeals case, points out the error of OPM’s ways in Federal Disability Retirement cases, where insistence upon “objective” medical evidence continues to dominate, despite the lack of such requirement to the contrary.  Such an issue is especially relevant, of course, in cases where psychiatric medical conditions prevail, and when OPM insists upon the lack of such “objective” medical evidence where none can be obtained, it leads to Federal and Postal employees to react desperately in a preemptively unreasonable frenzy of actions.

Not knowing the law is one thing; knowing, but deliberately ignoring it, is quite another.  But the price Federal and Postal employees pay for when a bureaucracy engages in practices which clearly defy the clear mandate of legal requirement, results in preemptive actions which ultimately lead to another day in Court, to argue that which one thought was previously already established.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Medical Retirement: The Pigsty

The term implies a negative connotation; of a messy, untidy area,  as well as denoting an unsanitary condition; but beyond the association, an undeserved reputation that the inhabitant lives by choice in such a state of disarray and uncleanliness.  But pigs by nature do not choose to live where feces and food mix; rather, the forced confinement within minimized living quarters results in the undeserved reputation.

That is often how Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers feel when they are in the middle of preparing, formulating and 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 — like being in the midst of a pigsty.

Tidiness is not the normative process; stuff happens, and the euphemism of human waste seems to hit a proverbial fan.  The medical condition itself seems to force the unpleasantness; agencies respond by placing greater and more onerous demands and constraints upon the Federal or Postal employee; and the admixture of that which should be left separately, becomes commingled and the professionalism once prided upon is swept out the door.

Suddenly, the Federal or Postal employee is not considered the “rising star”, and performance reviews of superlative heights are no longer a given; Supervisors and coworkers walk by with cold shoulders, and empathy and understanding are human emotions forgotten and shunned.  All throughout, the Federal or Postal employee must deal with the medical condition itself, and then some.

Filing for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits is always a stressful time, and one where an ordered and orderly state of affairs is temporarily suspended.  But when once the sought-after condition is achieved, and the prioritized focus upon attending to one’s medical conditions can be attained, time allows for the past to fade away into a desultory dream of distant calling, where the pigsty of past lives is replaced with a pastured plateau of new beginnings.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Medical Retirement: The Value of Consistency

Consistency establishes validity; validation results in enhancement of credibility; and credibility prevails over minor errors and unintended oversights.  In analyzing a narrative, or engaging in a comparative analysis of two or more documents, it is the factual and historical consistency which allows for a conclusion of validated credibility. When a pattern of inconsistencies arise, suspicions of intentional misdirection beyond mere minor error, begins to tinge.

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 under FERS or CSRS, or even CSRS Offset, the question of sequential order of documentary preparation is important.  Such relevance on this matter can be gleaned if the preparation is looked at retrospectively — not from the beginning of the process, but rather, from the perspective of OPM and how they review and determine cases.

With that perspective in mind, it is important to prepare and formulate one’s Federal Disability Retirement application based upon the appreciated value of consistency, and as consistency of statements, purpose, coordination of documentary support and delineated narrative of one’s disability and its impact upon one’s inability to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties is recognized, an effective Federal Disability Retirement application will be formulated with deliberative efficacy, and where retrospection through introspection will result in increasing the prospective chances of success.

Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire