Long-Term Disability Federal & Postal Employees: The Doubt of Openness

We have all seen it: In sports, and particularly in basketball, where a singular player suddenly finds him or herself alone in the open court, the ball in hand, with no one anywhere near.  All that the player has to do is to dribble, take a few steps and lay the ball into the basket.

What happens?  There is a hesitation.  Why?  Because the normal course of things has not occurred — no defender, no opposition, no crowding, no attempt to block him, etc.  The doubt of openness makes the player hesitate.  Or even in football — a wide opening for an offensive back or a catch in the open field, with the goal post open and a clear pathway with no opposition.  Then the hesitation, the look back, the sudden doubt of openness.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition which prompts an initial, tentative look at the forms required for Federal Disability Retirement benefits — the “openness” and simplicity of the questions asked may make you believe that the field before you has a clear and unimpeded pathway.  Then the doubt of openness will, and should, suddenly prevail.  Because, in the end, there is no clear path in a Federal Disability Retirement case, and the opposition will appear suddenly enough once it is filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Contact a Federal Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law in order to quell the chimera resulting from the doubt of openness.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Lying

It is a peculiarly human endeavor, not known to be prevalent — if in existence, at all — in other species of the animal kingdom.  Shakespeare references it often; criminal behavior is detected within the web of it; and in everyday life, half of the population in courtrooms across the world engage in it; or, is that fair?  Can it be that there are “differing perspectives” or “alternative truths” (the lexicon of modernity)?

For instance, when an eye witness to an event swears under penalty of perjury that “I saw X stab Y” when, in a closed-circuit video replay, it clearly shows that it was Y who stabbed X — is the “eye witness” lying?  Is being mistaken the same as lying?  Or is it good enough that the prefatory qualifier of “I saw” enough to justify the mistaken encapsulation of an event having occurred?

Does intention matter?  Does it make a difference if, prior to making the statement under oath, revenge was a factor in one’s motive?  What if the eye-witness said to her/himself prior to taking the stand, “I’ll get X back for being mean to me by testifying that he stabbed Y first before getting stabbed himself”?

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 the case that — unfortunately — lying abounds when it comes to others in the agency filling out the Agency’s portion of a Federal Disability Retirement application.  Whether in stating that the Agency tried everything they could do in their power to “accommodate” a person — when the truth is, they did nothing and didn’t care to do anything — it is unfortunately a pervasive fact of life in the kingdom of man.

We are a species with a proclivity for lying, and the best we can do is to counter our own proclivities by trying to present the truth in as strong a light as possible.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Flower and the Bee

From an objective viewpoint, they represent a disparate set of entities.  On the face of it, they have nothing in common.  Yet, it is the symbiotic relationship that allows for pollination and propagation, and the nexus between the two is a necessary relationship between the two in order for new seeds to be generated, and for a thriving environment to continue to flourish.

How that “connection” between two dissimilar entities is developed, is a natural order originating from unseen forces; but how we have come to recognize the nexus is through observation, experience and logical analysis.  Much of what we do, see and pass by are similarly connected, but of which we fail to recognize the intersections.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM is often like that — of being denied simply because we fail to see the logical connections.  We believe, for example, that submitting old medical records that date far back would show how long we have suffered, but fail to see the connection that it might also reveal the converse: That, despite the medical condition, we were able to successfully perform our jobs.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Medical Retirement Law and recognize the nexus that must be developed; and like the flower and the bee, begin to develop the connections necessary in order to pollinate a successful Federal Disability Retirement filing.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The fallacy of just-ology

It is the manner in which we dismiss the relevant, the attitude of minimizing and the conduct of our nature in modernity; just-ology is the capacity to turn one’s back upon something and dismissively wave a hand and declare, “Oh, it’s just___”.  It’s just a minor set-back; it’s just X being X; it’s just a passing phase; it is just….

The mindset itself is one that can incrementally, insidiously creep beneath the surface of what we actually believe; for, the word itself — ‘just’ – is a peculiarly insignificant word, and one that is surreptitiously inserted amongst other words, concepts, hidden between phrases and carelessly dropped between lines of greater thoughts.  As an adjective, it connotes the moral compass of a person or society; as an adverb, it often implies precision or exactness; but in common, everyday usage, it is that word which minimizes, limits and casts away into the garbage heap of irrelevance.

It is precisely by the exactness of defining something so narrowly that the precision itself makes it irrelevant.  It “puts X into its proper place” by defining it “just” so.  Precision is good; precision for accuracy’s sake is even better; but when precision minimizes to the extent of insignificance, it can be misleading.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition for many years just won’t go way, and just keeps getting worse, and just continues to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it just may be time to begin 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.  Just in case.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The complex simplified

Ultimately, that is the reason why we hire experts in a particular field.  Life has advanced with such complexity that everything has become particularized into specialized fields where focus upon a subject becomes narrower and narrower.

The days of former times when the neighborhood doctor came and made house visits with his black leather bag are no longer existent; instead, we go to the doctor’s office, and only then to be referred to countless and whatever other specialists for further consultation and diagnosis.  The “general practitioner” is merely the gatekeeper; once inside the gate, there are multiple other doorways that must be approached, entered, and traveled through a maze of further developments of referrals until the “right one” is finally connected to.

Law has become the same as medicine; no longer can one simply hang up one’s shingle and “practice” law in every generality; rather, the legal field has become such a conundrum of complexity that the best approach is to first understand what legal issue needs to be addressed, then to locate a lawyer who specializes in that particular field of law.  From the lawyer’s perspective, it is a job of taking the complex and simplifying it such that the layman can comprehend the issues at hand, the approach that will be taken, and the resolution offered.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the issue is encompassed by the developing need to think about the future and to adjust and adapt to whatever benefits are offered for the Federal or Postal employee in such circumstances.

The benefit of “Federal Disability Retirement” is not often even known by Federal or Postal employees to exist.  However, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is certainly an option to be considered.  It is, however, a complex administrative process where adequate and sufficient medical documentation must be gathered, where certain key elements and points of law must be addressed, and if it is not carefully formulated, can have dire legal consequences without careful review and processing.

As with so many things in life, having a legal representative advocate for your case becomes a necessity where the complex is simplified, but where simplification does not mean that it is simple –merely that it is indeed complex but needs to be streamlined so that it is cogent, comprehensible and coherent in its presentation, substance and submission.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The dead, the dying and youth

Have you ever seen a flower arrangement that weaves together deadwood with bright and colorful summer explosions?  They tell us of that which reflects modernity:  The dead are forgotten in the background; the sick and dying are mere echoes fading quickly into a distant past; and it is only the vigorous who dominate and forcefully remain in the forefront.

How a society coordinates the interaction between the triad of life’s complex ingredients reveals the extent of its inner soul and character.  For, how many of us truly want to live in a pure State of Nature, where only the brute strength of predatory behavior would rule?  How many of us would survive in such a dystopian world, and for how long?

How we treat the remains, vestiges and memories of those gone; what we do with the ones still alive but deteriorating, suffering and lonely in their abandoned abodes; and whatever is left for the youth, what value of transference is imparted from the traditions longstanding, the obligations imparted, and the core values embraced – these determine the viability of a society in turmoil.

For, the dead reveal in constancy as to who we are by giving us a past; the dying, what we are made of by the example of how we treat the least of our community; and the value of youth is inherent in the lineage existent for the future continuation of a viable and vibrant tradition; and it is always the interrelationships between the tripartite worlds that determine whether and how.

We tend to want to compartmentalize, then to isolate each into their individual components such that one never interrelates with another.  But reality often will force a society to reflect upon such an artificial manner of conceptual isolationism, and sometimes it is by mere change of perspective that can lead to a paradigm shift of sorts.

Thus does this happen when we see a flower arrangement that artfully weaves the deadwood of winter with the vibrant colors of spring, and allow for even the panorama of fall leaves to still reveal beauty and breathtaking insights, and allow for the youth of summer blossoms to radiate, while at the same time giving deference to the others in the haiku of life.  It is often through a metaphor like this on a macro-scale that we can then glean a reflective outlook upon the microcosm of our own lives.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who sees him or herself as “less than worthy” – somewhat like the dying twigs in a flower arrangement otherwise filled with vibrancy and youth – all because a medical condition is becoming chronic and debilitating, one needs only look upon a flower arrangement that encompasses the triad of life’s natural flow.

Perhaps the agency is like those exploding blossoms of summer; and, more likely, the Federal Agency and the Postal Service will relegate the deadwood into the trash heap of corner offices and ignore those who are less productive.  But that is not a reflection upon the Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition and can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position; rather, that is an indictment upon the Federal Agency and the Postal Service itself.

Filing a 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, is merely another way to maintain the constancy of society’s unstated promise – much like the flower arrangement that intersperses the dead, the dying and youth – by asserting that legal rights still matter, and a medical condition does not necessarily mean that one’s career is just more deadwood at the back of the arrangement, but can still reveal a promising future for greater productivity in the private sector of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Poetry’s death

By the title is not meant the terminus of the literary genre; that would be too great a claim to consider.  No; instead, it is the more subtle manner of thought, the perspective of viewing, and the approach to living.  We live by metaphors and analogies; that is what the rise of language has accomplished, where the raw violence of predatory insights in nature’s setting of surviving could no longer tolerate, but where some amount of leisure, such little calculation of foresight, and a crumb of thoughtful reserve allowed for a world of mythological beauty.

Materialism killed the purring cat.  For a time, Charles L. Dodgson – whom we all know by the pen name, “Lewis Carroll” – attempted to stem the tide of decay, and succeeded for a generation or so.

Once upon a time, parables could be understood; elven creatures and angels with wings releasing residues of golden dust, tinged with faith and tinctures of mysterious delights would pass by windows left ajar for welcoming strangers; and sleeping beauties, knights in shining armor riding upon white horses to rescue were but assumed and accepted, and not the rattling ugliness of windmills mistaken for dragons no longer existing.  We believed.

But then came science, logic and the Darwinian distance of antiseptic explanations, and we all embraced it because of its allure of pragmatic promises.  But has it brought us any greater joy or insight into life’s misgivings?

Shakespeare referred always to the alignment of the stars, and of gargoyles behind the fool’s mask; and while the inquisition of religion’s past haunts still in the corridors of forgotten subterranean memories, it is the loss of inquisitiveness which makes for greater sorrow.

Words and explanatory concepts must abide by the correspondence they convey to the greater world about; and whether the world is deemed flat, or the earth is no longer a geocentric universe but a reversal to an upside-down world constituting a heliocentric perspective, unless the believer is a seafarer or an astrophysicist attempting to calculate the incalculable in geometric complexities beyond our present concerns, what difference does it make – except that we no longer embrace the wonderland lost to the science of inchoate values.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the present pain and anguish suffered is something experienced in “real time” and impacted in actual terms, it is often poetry’s death which compels one to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Think about it:  it is work in order to play; play is the time of leisure in order to engage in the poetry of life.  But when a medical condition forces one into a life of drudgery, where the “play” part of life is merely more work in order to get enough rest or sleep to continue in the “work” portion of living, then life as a whole becomes unbearable, and no amount of poetry can soothe the pains of this life.

That is why preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Employee Disability Retirement application – in order to circumvent the agony of one’s medical condition – becomes important in order to reach that plateau where one can attend to the medical conditions themselves, and further, to forestall the inevitability of poetry’s death.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Frustrated Purposes

The linear attempt is the methodology of direct purpose; it is the measurement of length — of a straight line from point A to point B, of a one-dimensional character.  Any obstacle placed in its path represents a frustration of that purpose, and merely delays and obfuscates the attempt to accomplish a stated goal.

How to ad lib in circumstances where obstacles appear; the consideration of options and alternatives in the face of detours and unexpected deterrences; what malleability of core values must be shown when necessity arises; these are all challenges within a universe of expectations otherwise untested.

The hardest of these, of course, relates to deliberate attempts by outside forces to frustrate one’s purposes — whether by other people, coworkers, Supervisors, Managers, or perhaps even the microcosmic body politic of an organization or entity as a whole; or by circumstances otherwise unexpected, like a medical condition.  It is bad enough for one or the other to be the sole cause of turmoil; when both conspire jointly, they become a source of angst and agony.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal job or Postal position, it is that fight against both fronts simultaneously which becomes unbearable.

Not only must the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker contend against the challenges of the deteriorating medical condition, but concurrently, at every turn, the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service works day and night to seemingly frustrate the sincere attempts of the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker to return to a level of functionality such that the positional duties may be fulfilled and satisfactorily completed.

Thus does 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, become an important consideration in the delayed destination of frustrated purposes.

That linear sight of myopic perspective — of a career of accomplishments set over a lifetime, with retirement as a byproduct in a future destination and contribution to society as the groundwork of contentment — must be allowed to swerve, overcome and become a series of schizophrenic lines of zig-zagging spectrums, lest the frustration of purposes defeat the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Which Forms, How to Fill Them Out, and What to Put

Filling out forms is a part of life.  At some stage in our lives, we are required to complete forms.  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 positional duties as a Federal employee (which encompasses the full spectrum of positions, from secretaries, administrative assistants, to scientists, Information Technology Specialists, 1811 Law Enforcement Officers, etc.) or a U.S. Postal worker (including Craft employees, Managers, Postmasters, Supervisors, etc.), preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application may become a necessity.

Thus, the act of “form filling” must be confronted.  On computers, of course, if you have been completing online queries, the “autofill” option may be presented.  But the limitation of such an option, and the unavailability of that choice, should become readily apparent when attempting to complete the various “Standard Forms” required of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

For any remaining CSRS employees intending to file for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, the series embodied under the designation of SF 2801 must be completed, along with the SF 3112 series.  For all of the rest of the Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who came into Federal or Postal Service after around 1985, and who are under FERS, the SF 3107 series must be completed, and as well, the SF 3112 series of standard forms.

Thus has the question, “Which Forms?” been answered.  As for the remaining two questions:  How to fill them out and What to put —  the “how” is, to put it mildly, with care and trepidation; the “what to put” is too complex to elucidate in this forum.  The series of “informational” forms — SF 2801 series for CSRS employees and SF 3107 for FERS employees — are fairly straightforward (e.g., full name, date of birth, Social Security number, agency name and location, military service, etc.).

It all comes back to the SF 3112 series which becomes problematic — for that is where the Federal and Postal employee must “prove” the nexus between one’s positional duties and the medical conditions by which one is prevented from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties.  For that, the Federal and Postal employee must go “outside” of the boundaries of the forms themselves, and consult documentation obtained from the doctor, and make legal arguments based upon wise counsel and advice.

As with much of life, it is never as easy as a bureaucracy promises; indeed, the complexity of life is in the very bureaucratization of administrative forums.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Plans, purposes and pivoting positions

The first in the series indicates the human endeavor of imagination and creativity, unique sets of binary forecasts projecting into a beautification of one’s future; the second, the qualitative and substantive core which motivates and impels the preceding characteristic and transforms it from mere ethereal musings into a concretized formulation of action; and the final element of the tripartite aggregate represents the capacity and ability of a person to remain adaptable, malleable, ready to take into consideration new data and conform appropriately, such that the originating plan is never abandoned but merely evolved into a pragmatic reflection, yet driven by the underlying impetus based upon strength and character.

It is the last of the three which is often the most difficult in this society of rigidity and unforgiving iconoclasm.  Bureaucracy does that to people, as the Leviathan of administrative growth and conformity to identity of purpose leaves little room for imagination and creativity.  We like to fool ourselves by pointing to the vast number of books published, or to “new plays” being produced off-and-on-Broadway; or to the innovations attained and announced in the world of technology, medicine and legal precedent, then pat ourselves on the back with self-praise and delusional despair.  But reality confronts us otherwise in the daily encounters with ordinary people.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer 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 with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, the direct conflict with the ways of repetition and customary machinations of administrative malfeasance come to the fore.

Agencies rarely, if ever, desire to accommodate; they do not see the value of retaining Federal employees who have served with dedication, honor and reliability for these many years; and, instead, are willing to forego the minimal alterations to workplace requirements and engage in a termination fight in order to retain its mindless inscrutability.  Plans are meant to be changed — and for the Federal or Postal worker, the entrance of a medical condition, whether physical, psychiatric, or a combination of both, should so alter the plans.

Purposes can be adaptable — and so they should, when the medical condition enters the equation.  And those pivoting positions first learned in playing the game of basketball?  They teach us the valuable lessons not only to elude the opposition, but in order to gain the advantage of a position of strength where weakness was once thought to prevail.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire