CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: Insipience

The thread of differentiation and conceptual distinction can be based upon a mere sliver.  In practical life, pausing a moment because a person forgot his or her keys, can result in avoiding a chain of events terminating in causal calamities, merely because the time differentiation as a consequence of the slight delay allows for time to alter the historical ripples of cause and effect.

Words and conceptual distinctions can have similar minutiae of differentiations.  Linguistic gymnastics and elasticity aside, the word “insipience” conveys a meaning of being foolish and lacking of wisdom.  Changing a single consonant, and instead transforming the word into “incipience”, suddenly alters the concept into one encompassing origination and beginning stages.  Upon closer inspection, however, such a singular change of a consonant resulting in a radical alteration of meaning explodes with a recognition that the two are closely related: That which is in its beginning stages is often lacking of wisdom, precisely because little or no thought or reflection has been allowed.

That is precisely why the beginning stage of a process is so important — because it lays the foundation for all that follows. For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s job, the importance of beginning the sequential procedure of formulating an effective Federal Disability Retirement application cannot be overly stressed.

Federal Disability Retirement is a submission which is reviewed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS or CSRS.  As such, the reviewing process is accomplished be an agency separate and distinct (in most cases) from the one the Federal or Postal employee is employed by.  The early stages of formulation and preparation in a Federal Disability Retirement application will provide the necessary and important foundation for the successful outcome of a Federal Disability Retirement case.

It is thus the incipience of formulating and preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application, which will determine whether or not the outcome will be insipient, or not.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement Benefits for US Government Employees: The Game of Go

The game of Go involves planning, strategy, finesse, a sense of when to aggressively pursue, and a lesson of when to withdraw.  It is a game originating from China, thousands of years old, yet identical in play and rules today.  It is a game of daily living; and, indeed, even the tactile component of feeling the soft smoothness of each stone as you place them on the surface of the playing board, along with the geometric beauty of the patterns which your opponent complements as you lay your handiwork — all with the attribute of two basic colors:  black and white.

One can always make too much of an analogy between sports and life; fiction and reality; a mere game, and a process.  Games ultimately are what they are:  a play which, in the end, has no significance beyond the entertainment of the moment.  But some games help to sharpen one’s sense of daily living.

The metaphor and analogy to be applied between the game of Go and practicing law, including preparing, formulating and filing on behalf of Federal and Postal employees to obtain Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is the need to understand the process; to present the evidence in a bold and unabashed manner; and to understand the “opponent” and what the opposition represents and will likely do.

Preempting what the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is likely to do in response to one’s handiwork, is an essential part of both the game of Go and of any practice of law.  That is why a legal strategy is important and relevant in the preparation of a Federal Disability Retirement application — for, like the game of Go, unless you make the proper connections between the medical evidence, the law, one’s positional duties, and one’s statement of disability, you will be surrounded by your opponent’s tactile placement of experienced handiwork, and find that all of your efforts have come to naught.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Disability Retirement: Preempting Anticipated Problems

The obvious and self-evident problems of many can be characterized as failing to know what the questions are; for, if the question is unknown, how can one provide an answer?

Thus, in entering into the surreal universe of Federal Disability Retirement benefits, which can be both a procedural, administrative nightmare, as well as a substantive morass of conflicting and confusing legal framework, the novice who first encounters the Standard Forms (SF 3107, with Schedules A, B & C for the FERS employee; SF 2801 with Schedules A, B & C for the CSRS employee; and SF 3112 series for both the FERS and CSRS employee) may well have a perspective that, inasmuch as the questions asked are fairly easy to comprehend, the answers themselves would naturally, likewise, be easy to append.

But as much of law and the success of legal reasoning involves the preempting of anticipated future problems (e.g., that is precisely what Estates & Trusts lawyers attempt to do — to anticipate any objections of those who are heirs or potential beneficiaries of an estate), so the lack of knowledge of the wide body and historical evolution of how X came to be through the legal evolution and expansion of Y, results in the grave disadvantage of the Federal or Postal Worker who stumbles upon the compendium of the Federal Disability Retirement process.  And, of course, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management loves nothing more than to look upon the unknowing Federal applicant, with hungry eyes, ready to pounce upon such lack of knowledge.

Preempting a problem requires the anticipation of the question; and knowing the question is the first step to coming up with an answer.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal and Federal Disability Retirement: The Necessity of the Legal Argument

Disparate facts, placed in the same vicinity, aggregated in order to formulate a composite of conceptual constructs, can provide to the recipient information concerning a specific issue, resolution of a problem, perspective on a viewpoint, etc.  However, when a particular issue is governed by statutory authority, history of case-law interpretation, and multiple sets of regulatory issuances from a Federal Agency — and, further, where it involves an application to prove eligibility, as opposed to merely filling out a form to ascertain entitlement — in such an instance, it is necessary to argue “the law” , as opposed to merely reciting a set of “facts”.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, it is sometimes questionable as to the value of making complex legal arguments, especially at the initial stage of the process, and sometimes at the Second, or “Reconsideration” Stage of the process.  But that is the point, isn’t it — that it is a “process“, as opposed to a singular filing event?  For a process necessarily involves preparation and formulation not only for the “present”, momentary event; rather, it entails and encapsulates potential future considerations.

OPM cites “the law” right back at you in a denial letter; the Federal or Postal employee must be able to adequately respond by understanding, applying, rebutting and answering with the very laws which are referred to, implied by, or otherwise referenced in OPM’s denial.  Furthermore, preemptive recitation and reference to laws governing specific issues is always an effective methodology of arguing a case.  Remember:  Facts alone only arbitrarily provide information; information recited without context fails to make a case; it is through logical argumentation that the persuasiveness of a set of facts can be effectively conveyed in order to win a Federal Disability Retirement case.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire