OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: The Trials of Life

This is a difficult period in everyone’s life.  We can try and put a brave front, attempt to have a “positive outlook”, and walk around with a frozen smile on our faces, but the plain fact is that life is tough.

These days, the trials which we face often appear to be insurmountable.  Inflation eats away at the stagnant pay; the bureaucratic state seems to pass legislation after legislation which does nothing for the middle class; the amount of waste and fraud in the federal expenditures leaves one wondering — why do we pay so much in taxes when everything seems to be given away in mindless and useless political paybacks?

Did we really have to give those billions for corporations to start building computer chip factories?  How many billions were stolen for pandemic-relief monies?  At last count, was it (conservatively estimating) some 40 – 60 Billion?  What percentage of kids are now on some form of anti-depressants?  How many kids are now unable to read, write, or to pass basic educational tests?  How many suicides are there, now, every day, every month, every year?

And meanwhile, we see the value of our paychecks diminishing because of the inflationary cauldron we fail to understand.

The trials of life, indeed, are heavy in modernity, but one aspect which still provides a ray of hope for people concerns Federal Disability Retirement Law under the FERS disability system.  At least, there, the Federal Government has continued to recognize the value of providing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits for those who cannot continue to work in the career of your choice.

Contact a FERS Medical Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and recognize that — even in the midst of the trials of life — there is still a benefit which can help a FERS employee who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of your Federal job.

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 Process: The Extrapolated You

You have a whole life, an entire story — a “novel” of sorts, with chapters beginning with your birth, paragraphs describing your accomplishments and sentences denoting your character.  A friend, neighbor or acquaintance comes along and picks up this novel, opens it to a random page and reads one sentence.  Perhaps that sentence, or partial-sentence, reads as follows: “…and people thought that his behavior was unacceptable.”

That person walks away with this single facet, not having read the rest of the novel, or perhaps not caring, or even worse — of wanting to hold onto that singular, “out-of-context” extrapolation of an impression wrongly held.  For, in the very next sentence, the paragraph reads: “It turns out that his behavior was entirely appropriate, and everyone who had thought otherwise had to admit to this basic fact.”

Such is a parallel scenario with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in reviewing a FERS applicant for Federal Disability Retirement benefits — for, not only does OPM only see the extrapolated you based upon your FERS Disability Retirement application, but moreover, they are looking to selectively take extrapolated portions of your narrative as a disabled person, and are glad to take things out of context and deny your claim.

How to counter this?  By arguing and applying the Law.

Contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin at the outset to rebut and preemptively reply by citing the relevant law in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal or Postal Employee Disability Retirement application and present the “you” as more than the extrapolated you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The Successful Equation

Remember those days in school when — not only did you have to know how to figure out the answer to a question — you actually had to know what the right “equation” was?  Without the proper equation, you could never solve the “problem”.  Yes, yes, you could do some tinkering around the edges — of “figuring out” in some unique way, but ultimately the only way to solve the issue was by rote memorization (something not required, anymore, in this day and age of computers and smartphones) of that mathematical statement on the near side of the equal sign.

If only life were like that — of simply memorizing the equation, then proceeding forward and solving every problem.  But that’s the nub of it all, isn’t it?

Life brings forth encounters and circumstances, “problems” and difficulties that refuse to respond to an equation pre-planned for the vicissitudes of life’s misgivings.  Are mathematicians better at adapting and responding to life’s travails?  Or, do philosophy majors and those who embrace dictums to live by (e.g., that all of life is a “river” and we can never step into the same one twice, and other such Chopra-like platitudes that carry us through difficult times) better sail through the trials that everyone inevitably faces?

The fact is, equations are often best left for mere theoretical applications, and rarely conform to the changes of life’s encounters.

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 search for an “equation” in preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application should begin with a consultation with an FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

While there may not be a pre-set equation to follow, there are certainly important steps to take in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS: The Internal Web of Deceit

The quote is often attributed (wrongly) to Shakespeare, when it was Sir Walter Scott in his lengthy poem, Marmion, which conceived it: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.”  It is the internal web caught within the circular insularity of one’s thought-processes which allows for the capacity to deceive — but of or for whom?  Is it ourselves we deceive, or others, or both?

The problem with internalizing one’s thoughts is not that they are necessarily invalid; it is that there is no objective basis upon which to test their viability.  We all engage in private thoughts; carrying on conversations with ourselves, the problem lies not in whether or not we have interesting ones or not, but whether and to what extent the exaggerated absurdity of circular discourses take on a more bizarre aspect.

Fear does this; and when we fail to test our thoughts against the reality of the world, the web we weave becomes more and more tangled, until the practice of self-deception takes on an enhanced and serious result.

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, it is often necessary to consult with an attorney before considering the difficult bureaucratic path of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Your medical condition is no doubt “real”.  The problem lies not in the medical condition, but upon the administrative procedures which must be passed through in order to present a credible case of eligibility for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

For that, it becomes necessary to break out of the internal web of deceit — of the cage within one’s insular thought-processes — and to test the strength of the web as against the laws which govern the administrative procedures involved in formulating an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire