Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Flexibility in a Plan

“What is the game plan?”  That is the question which, when posed, is evidence that one recognizes that engagement in an activity or process should have a logistical and strategic paradigm from which to proceed.

Such an overarching plan need not be a formally drawn, meticulously detailed one; it can be fairly general in its guideposts, with some specificity in milestones.  But to formulate a plan which is discernibly comprehensible is an important first step before initiating any process, whether legal, recreational or otherwise.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, the plan of action is important to the overall administrative facet, if only to respond to outside pressures which will almost certainly prevail upon the Federal or Postal employee — from one’s agency; from the financial pressures which will continue to remain a factor; from the ongoing medical condition itself.

Yet, within any “game plan” or “master plan”, one must also figure in a necessary component of flexibility.  Just as the future is never a certainty or a predictable development, so changes in a process where one is attempting to file for a benefit will often incur and involves unforeseen changes and malleable circumstances.

An unseen event or trigger, however, does not necessarily mean that one cannot proceed; it merely require the ability to circumvent the obstacle, if indeed it is an obstacle at all.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: What the Agency May Say

Individuals can and do tell untruths (an euphemism for a “lie”); organizations, as a collective congregation of multiple individuals, can therefore also convey negations of truthful statements (a further euphemism, stated diplomatically to avoid the unpleasantry of a direct statement).  Of course, the justification for such factually incorrect statements is that there is a “difference of perspective” or of an opinion which is not in agreement with another’s.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the portion of a Federal Disability Retirement application which the Agency must complete — most notably the Supervisor’s Statement (SF 3112B) and the Agency’s Certification of Reassignment and Accommodation Efforts (SF 3112D) can and most often do contain misstatements, differing perspectives and negations of untruthful statements.

They are not like the other forms which must be completed by the Agency — i.e., the checklist, the Certified Summary of Federal Service, etc., where the information provided can be compared to factually verifiable documents, statements, etc., and therefore will be constrained by objective and ascertainable facts.

Unfortunately, there is “wiggle room” on both the SF 3112B and the SF 3112D, and agencies tend to utilize the wide expansiveness of such roominess to move about.  That is why, what the agency says or might say, must be preempted as much as possible by the medical report and other documentation.  By providing as much of an airtight case prior to submission of the disability retirement packet to the agency, one increases the odds that the impact of what the agency says, will be minimal, and minimized.

Of course, there is then the further problem of the inaccuracies engaged in by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management itself — but that is another story to tell, and one which must be categorized in a department beyond “fiction”, but more akin to the genre of “fantasy” or “science fiction”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire