FERS Medical Retirement: Reconsideration & OPM’s Hope

Federal Disability Retirement can be a long, arduous, and frustrating administrative process and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management does not help to make it a smooth one.  You will likely get denied at the Initial Stage of the process, and furthermore, the initial Denial Letter from OPM will have you scratching your head in a state of anger and confusion as to its inherent lack of coherence or logic.

That is because it is OPM’s hope that you will simply give up and go away.  However, the mantra which you must always adopt is:  Never give up, and keep persisting, no matter what OPM says in their denial.  If you don’t win at the Reconsideration Stage, then you still have a chance at appealing it to the next stage – before an Administrative Judge at the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.

At both stages of the bureaucratic process, it is a good idea to contact an experienced FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, who can properly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your case, and thus respond accordingly.  For, while persistence and refusing to go away is the first step in beating back OPM’s denials, such persistence must also be followed by a competent understanding and application of the legal criteria to rebut OPM’s attempt to marginalize your Federal Disability Retirement claim under the FERS system.

Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and don’t succumb to OPM’s hope that you will just give up and go away.

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.

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Loss of Continuum

How does a child know where the neatly-packaged meat displayed on a store’s shelf come from?  Or the clothes which hang on a mannequin displayed behind a plate of glass; or even of the glass itself?  And what about the old man who shuffles by with a cane and a bent back?

The child walks by and the old man staggers, and what question does the little girl ask or does the old man disappear after the two pass by — poof!  Like magic.  Yet, the old man — and the little girl — each have a life beyond the mere passing; of a childhood one has and the childhood the other will yet have; of a home, a hearth, a heart full of memories harkening from here to there, or perhaps to nowhere.

In a village of yesteryear, the continuum of each life is known because everyone shares in the life of each other as a community of interconnected lives.  In modernity, we give lip-service to “caring” and the continuum of life, but the reality is that we have no relationship with the person who stitched our clothes; nor do we know which animal from whence the meat came; or the farmer who grew the tomato in the produce section, let alone the life and problems of the person who stacked the Nestle cookies on the shelf so neatly.

The loss of continuum is how we live, and that is true of the Federal or Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition and goes into work — more often than not, none of the coworkers know the circumstances of the individual except that he or she is a “shirker” because he or she fails to “carry his own weight”, anymore.

Filing for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is often a step towards regaining the continuum previously lost — at least for the individual whose career in the Federal Service is no longer appreciated in a community which has been dispersed with the loss of empathy and loss of continuum.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Employee Disability Retirement: The Legacy of Achievement

We all dream of having contributed to society in greater or lesser ways.  Whether individual achievements are enough, where private satisfaction is gained through a restricted circle of those “in the know”, is doubtful; and even of leaving a name behind on a building, a statue or a commemorative stamp — what difference does it ultimately make, the cynic would wonder aloud?

When we pass by a building with a nameplate in one of the bricks or chiseled into the mortar, do we even acknowledge it, let alone recognize who that person was or what contribution he or she had made to the world?  Do we stand and Google the name and ooh-and-ah at the achievements bestowed?  Or of a statute with the proverbial fountain spewing daily freshness of recycled water, of perhaps a general who had once-upon-a-time led a charge and captured or killed a great opposing force — is that what we consider an achievement worthy of a bronze emblem?

And how about the more subtle legacy, of leaving imprints and personality traits, whether positive or negative, in one’s children or grandchildren?  “Oh, he is just like his father!”  “She reminds me of her mother.”  Or of those quiet achievements by challenged individuals daily around the world; we know not what effort it took, but for the person making the effort in the silence of his or her private suffering.

Achievement is a funny animal; it is ultimately a feeling; otherwise, why would we build statues to declare it to the world if we truly believed in the legacy entombed?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition no longer allows the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, perhaps the achievements one had hoped for in one’s career are no longer achievable, and thus the “legacy” of achievement is no longer possible.

In that event, the Federal or Postal worker needs to reconsider the values once sought, and to re-prioritize the goals pursued.  Perhaps “health” was not part of the original list, but should be; and that is where an effective preparation of a Federal Disability Retirement application comes into play: One’s career was never the legacy to achieve; it was merely down on the list of priorities to be sought, where one’s health and well-being should have been higher on the list to begin with.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
FERS Disability Lawyer

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Night wanderings

Ever open your eyes in the middle of the night and, instead of falling quickly back to sleep, allow for the eyes to wander across the silent room where others are still and asleep — the dog on the floor (or perhaps curled at the foot of the bed where human warmth has gathered for the pure comfort serving the creature) and the partner beside; the quiet glow of the digital numbers in bold red reflection; the pictures on the walls — though you “know” what they depict, the shadows hide them, and yet you believe you “see” them because familiarity arouses the imagination even in darkness; and the squeezing sense of silence so overpowering that you wonder about the universe at large and who, like yourself, is awakened by silence itself?

It is in those moments that, just before the panic of realization sets in that tomorrow is just a few hours away, we realize that mortality is a condition we must face; that the child’s imagination cannot revisit yesterday’s remorse; and the saddest of all truisms: For the most part, this is a cruel and uncaring universe.  Where do such thoughts originate?  Is it just the dream-world when sleep battles with sanity and one’s night wanderings will not suppress the bustle of the day’s meanderings?

Perhaps clarity comes in the wake of slumber’s twilight; whatever the phenomenon, night wanderings bring one into the netherworld of the “in-between”, where reality is not quite recognized and a dream is not ever fulfilled.  That is the type of experience that the Federal and Postal worker experiences when confronted with a medical condition that impacts one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position: not quite in the reality of the world’s harshness, not yet tested by the Agency’s or Postal Service’s full force of cruelty and uncaring.

Will they put me on a PIP?  Will they require a “Fitness for Duty” evaluation?  What happens when my FMLA is exhausted?  Will the agency just cut me off?

It becomes clear at some point that the Federal Agency and the Postal Service are not there as a friend or colleague looking out for your bests interests, and that you must initiate the process of looking out for yourself by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Those night wanderings often have the advantage of giving clarity to a reality beset with the quietude of pure silence, but then morning arrives and the clash of the day’s reality awakens within us the cruelty of the world around.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Coordination

Lack of it brings out the awkwardness of disjointedness; sometimes, it can be compensated by height or other attributes, but even then, it results in lack of efficiency, at best, and a danger to self or others at its worst.  Coordination is necessary not only for efficiency, but for effectiveness, as well.

Try and remember when you first began learning how to operate a motor vehicle: the need to coordinate one’s panorama of visual stimuli from all directions; judging the speed, distance and predictable behavior of other vehicles surrounding; of “putting it all together” in steering the vehicle, maintaining the proper speed, of determining the distance between yourself and other vehicles, how much pressure to exert upon the gas pedal and the brake pedal; and thank the stars that in modernity the “clutch” is no longer a common device on most vehicles, lest trying to get the car moving on a steep hill after the engine has stalled should again become the test of adulthood as it was for everyone in past generations.

Coordinating varying efforts, elements, components and the “thousand little things” that we now take for granted, was not such an insignificant encounter when we first learned to drive.  The simple task of adjusting the mirrors in coordination and in conjunction with the position of one’s seat was an exercise that once required thought and foresight, as one found it a bit more trying if you found out that you couldn’t see the other cars while traveling on a highway where speed limits were considered mere ornaments with irrelevant numbers on wooden posts to be summarily ignored.

Now, of course, everything is easy — coordination of all of the elements becomes a thoughtless exercise of taking things for granted.  For, with a push of a button, you can “reset” the previous coordinates already stored in the car’s computer memory bank.

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 become necessary to begin preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application for filing with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

It may, for many, seem like trying to learn how to drive all over again — of the need to coordinate all of the elements, including the medical reports, treatment records, office notes; of preparing a legal memorandum that is persuasive to OPM by pointing out how the medical evidence is supported by the legal precedents which have previously determined a successful outcome; of formulating the Applicant’s Statement of Disability in conjunction and in coordination with the medical evidence and legal argumentation following; and of coordinating all of the various evidentiary components that comprise the “Federal Disability Retirement Packet” that is to be submitted.

And like the driver who avoids the vehicle on the road that has the big-lettered sign saying, “Student Driver”, we all know that the reason why we steer clear of such vehicles is not because of the teacher accompanying the novice driver, but because of the lack of coordination that might ensue.

That is why consulting with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law is an important component in preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement case, because like the student driver just learning, it is the expert who teaches how to arrive safely from beginning-point A to destination B that coordinates the necessary operatic touch between stage and reality.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: Palatable possibilities

We often hear of that which is “possible”, then immediately pause to consider the probabilities of such declared possibilities.  For, isn’t it possible that there are martians on the far side of the moon, or that we all live in a dream, dreamt by the fragile whisperings of a butterfly, or that everything that we see, hear and experience is just nothing more than pure bosh, and Bertrand Russell was quite right after all, that our rumblings of metaphysical yearnings were merely a result of a stomach virus that needed an antacid to cure?

At what point are possibilities presented no longer palatable, and where are the limits of our imaginations such that reality clashes with fantasy and the medium between the two becomes so stretched that we cannot fathom their practical effects?  Have we come to a point now where supermarket tabloids are just as believable as mainline newspapers that cross the thresholds between truth and opinion?  Is virtual reality just as pleasurable as “real” reality, and does the realness of reality depend merely upon one’s perspective and opinion and how we view things?

Then, of course, there is the reality of a medical condition, and everything comes crashing down into a singular reality: mortality and health tend to bring us “back to the basics”.

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, what possibilities are palatable; whether possibilities presented are meaningful; it all comes down to the pragmatic choices from three: Stay, walk away or 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 real possibilities in life are generally quite simple; it is the luxury of the healthy to entertain the greater expanse of palatable possibilities, but for the Federal or Postal employee who is faced with a chronic and progressively debilitating medical condition, the choices are stark and limited.  It is within those limitations that the palatable possibilities must be carefully chosen, and such course of actions to be chosen should be advised and guided by a consultation with an attorney who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement, lest the palatable possibilities turn out to be an unpalatable probability chosen out of a mistaken belief in the existence of palatable possibilities.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The tentative step

This is a tough and dangerous world.  No longer a Hobbesian State of Nature nor of War, the Social Contract as envisioned by Locke or Rousseau provides some nominal protection, and thus do we identify ourselves as “civilized” entities in yet a dystopian universe where a greater majority of the rest of the world acts with unconcerned insanity by engaging in senseless wars of mass killings and genocidal encounters.  In such a world, we thoughtlessly bring newborns who must contend with an uncertain future, fraught with challenges unasked for and conflicts yet to be encountered.

Those tentative first steps of a toddler – how we watch with awe and observe with wonderment.  Why is that?  Why is the transition from ambulating as most other mammals do on four legs, to engaging an awkwardly wobble as a bipedal hominid, of such significance?  Is it because it marks the steps of initiation into the club of “civilized” society – that to stand upright and walk with our two feet, as opposed to the addition of the other two appendages, signifies the next stage of growth and maturity?  Yet, that tentative step reveals all, doesn’t it?

It marks the magnification of uncertainty for the future; it reveals the imperfection of the human animal; and it manifests the symbol of insecurity by deliverance of a vulnerable entity thrown into a pit of vipers and hyenas.  We do this to ourselves, and to the ones we say we love.  And as the toddler grows up, through further steps of initiations into a cruel world, how that tentative step cements and molds itself into a characterization of so much of life’s violent encounters.  Whether remembered or not, those nascent steps of uncertainty carry along with us like Pilgrim’s burdensome backpack, weighing upon us at different and varying stages of our lives.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find that a medical condition reenacts those tentative steps taken as a toddler, one becomes reminded that we came into this world uninvited, presented without a guide as to how to go about living life, and suddenly find yourself with a challenge:  No longer able to perform all of the essential elements of your job, your choices are to stay and endure the pain; leave, resign and walk away without anything you worked so hard to attain; or file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

And, like the toddler taking those first tentative steps, this is a new endeavor, a next phase, but probably without those doting parents cheering you on.  As a result, you may need to consult a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement law, if only to steady those two feet as you jump forward into an uncertain future by submitting a Federal Disability Retirement application to the OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Benefits: The Wind-Up Man

Before the age of batteries and electronic sophisticates, there were wind-up toys.  Mere mechanical wonders involving hidden spring actions and tightly wound coils for deliberative unwinding to propel movement, they betrayed a sense of wonder for their independence once released by the child’s hand.  But the movement stopped; the unwinding of spring actions released to their full extent; and further human involvement was necessary.

In stage plays of yore, what amounts to a “deus ex machina” required intervention; and so the thumb and forefinger would grasp the flat key inserted in the back of the toy, and wind it up all over again.  Many of us feel a kinship to such a descriptive process; the “winding up” may involve an unseen hand, but the rest feels eerily similar.

Medical conditions tend to magnify such a state of feeling; for, like the wind-up toy of childhood joys, the need for an intervening hand is required of both.  But for the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who needs to go home for that restorative sleep, or that 3-day weekend in order to regain a semblance of stamina for the week ahead, whatever winding up process may occur, is never enough.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, often find that — as each time the “winding up” process takes place, it becomes less and less effective, and more and more necessary to keep going back to the source of intervention — and so the vicious cycle ensues.

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 never the “total solution” to one’s medical problems; but, at the very least, it allows for one to reach that plateau of restorative rest, in order to recuperate.  As the wind-up toy must come to the end of its uncoiling mechanical actions, so the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer continue in the same manner, must consider options available to him or her, and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is certainly an alternative to consider.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire