FERS Medical Retirement: The Weekend (Weakened) Goal

Is that what we live for?  Is it sufficient?

Once, in youth, the thought was: Each day will be lived as preciously as any other day.  Thus the phrase, “Seize the Day” (or, if you want to sound somewhat intellectual, the latin phrase, “Carpe Diem”).  It is meant to remind us that tomorrow may not come at all and to live to the fullest that which is before us.

But so much of life is a drain; like the whirlpool sucking down into the sinkhole, the breath of life can barely manage to survive the rigors and stresses of each day, and so the weakened goal is to just make it to the weekend, where one can rest, find a bit of respite, and get the batteries recharged in order to survive the grueling Monday and beyond.

That aptly describes the healthy individual.  But if you are less than healthy?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a health condition such that the health condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the weekend is the weakened goal to reach, and any pablum of phrases like “carpe diem” is merely an empty dash of meaningless nothingness.

Getting through each day with a medical condition is hard enough; making it to the weekend in one’s weakened state, is even harder.

Perhaps it is time to contact a FER Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and get the process started, so that one day in the not-so-distant future, your weakened state may be attended to and those latin phrases, like “carpe diem”, aren’t just artificial hoorays to get you to the next weekend.

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.

 

OPM Medical Retirement Law: Incomplete Knowledge

Like a house abandoned in mid-construction, you can often tell about a person who suffers from such a “malady” — the metaphor of the unframed windows; perhaps the roof shingles had not yet been laid, leaving only the plywood boards which would slowly rot away; and while the concrete foundation may have been set, the siding or brick had not yet been placed, leaving the frame of the house standing, yet incomplete.

There are descriptive terms often used: “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing”; or, just of the autodidact who has little bits of knowledge here and there, but cannot quite put his arms completely around the subject at hand.  Incomplete knowledge is what we all experience, because the complexities of a subject have become too technical, too all-encompassing, such that we can barely complete our education on any single sub-section of a discipline.

Federal Disability Retirement Law is similarly poised — for, the compendium of case-laws handed down through judicial opinions, whether from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board or from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, has modified the originating statutes and regulations governing Federal Disability Retirement Law.

It is bad enough that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management itself fails to apply the law — often because of incomplete knowledge — but it happens enough times to the disadvantage of the Federal or Postal employee, such that a more complete knowledge of the law is necessary to rebut an unfairly-rendered decision.

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and make sure that you are not denied your eligibility rights because of incomplete knowledge.

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 Disability Retirement: The Mechanical Wind-Up Toy

Do they even make them, anymore?  Or, are all such toys and gadgets made with computer chips and batteries?

They were fascinating creations — from monkeys playing the drums to cars whizzing under the furniture; the only thing which stopped them was the end of the spring-action coils or whatever other means of internal arrangements were engaged.  As with all such gadgets, the cessation of activity came when the mechanical coil reached its end, the spring action came to a full release, or somehow the device reached its intended endpoint.

In the end, is it really any different from today’s gadgets — as when the battery loses its “juices” or the computer chip has burned itself out?

Human beings, as well, possess an endpoint to the internal mechanism of the body — of repetitive actions which break down the endurance of a joint; of injuries or diseases that attach organs and specific areas; of stresses which damage the mind.

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 his or her position with the Federal Agency or the Postal Unit, Federal Disability Retirement may be the answer to the unanswered question: Is there any recourse to my medical inability to perform all of the essential elements of my job?  Or, am I merely to be treated as a mechanical wind-up toy who has reached the end of my usefulness because of the unraveling of the internal coils that once allowed me to operate?

Contact a disability lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and see whether or not you can get beyond the limited warranty of a mechanical wind-up toy, and instead obtain a Federal Disability Retirement annuity and live beyond the life of the mechanism of springs and coils.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Of Life

It is too grand a concept to embrace.  It involves every aspect of the universe — of the past, present and future; of history and historicity; of the ancients, the cultural norms, the way in which we think, perceive, interpret and form opinions.  “Of life” — is a concept best left to philosophers and kings; of Shakespearean tragedies and the mini-tumults we face each day.

In former times, the dominance of grand philosophical schemes prevailed.  Now, we are left with the stunted leftovers — of problems in our families, our relationships, and wayward children who fail to take advice or wisdom from their elders.  Of life — it involves medical conditions, as well, as the body and mind are unable to withstand the stresses of daily living.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, and where one’s stage in his or her career is characterized by an inability to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the options of life become clear: Contact an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider the options of life offered.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Disability Retirement from Federal Jobs: The Time we Spend

The time we spend implies the level of our concern, our interests and our priorities.  The proportionality reveals where one’s “mind’ resides.  If work takes up the greater portion of our lives, then one is deemed a workaholic; if video entertainment seems to dominate, then some will whisper of being “addicted”; or of too much of anything — leisure, pleasures, topical asides or exotic obsessions — the tendency is to make judgments based upon the time given and the attention reserved.

When does an “interest” in something become an addiction or an obsession?  Does it depend upon each circumstance and the context surrounding the reasons imparted?

Certainly, initiating a “start-up” requires greater commitment than to be employed with an established firm; and learning a new activity or engaging a fresh issue will require a greater commitment at the outset.  Medical conditions, as well, often require a greater focus and investment of time. The problem with medical conditions is not the disproportionate time needed, but the time it takes away from other activities — from work; from time with family; from the time previously spent on other necessary activities, including the mundane like taking out the garbage.

For Federal and 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 time we spend on an ongoing medical condition — from taking SL, AL or LWOP (or being deemed AWOL), to being unable to complete tasks, etc. — is an indicator of when a Federal Disability Retirement application should be filed.

To obtain an objective assessment of one’s likelihood for a successful outcome, consult with an Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Claims: Hanging on a contingency

The metaphorical image representing such a phrase allows one to pause and reflect: the dichotomy between the physical world and the conceptual one — of a person “hanging”, as from a cliff, with his fingers turning white from gripping the tenuous life-line of a flimsy branch, a loose boulder or an outstretched hand of another; and of the technical term that possesses meaningful discourse only in a purely theoretical universe of conceptual constructs — denoting the idea of a future event or circumstance that cannot be relied upon with certainty, but may trigger a series of consequential future contingencies or further occurrences, etc.

Thus does the physical and the conceptual come together in an aggregation of a compound conceptual construct that may connote thus: You are in a tenuous situation where your physical well-being is dependent upon a future uncertainty that may result in events that may or may not yet happen.

Such a conditional circumstance is often how the Federal or Postal employee feels, who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition may result in the necessity of 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.  For, it is indeed the “physical” part of the entire event — the medical condition itself — which makes one feel “as if” one is dangling from the edge of a cliff.

And it is the “contingency” — the uncertain triggering mechanism, such as the anticipated adverse reaction of the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service; the tenuous reliance upon a doctor’s diagnosis and treatment; the growing inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties — that makes the medical condition all the more magnified in its exponentially-exacerbated conditions of anticipated calamities.

Life is often an unfortunate series of having to hang on to a contingency, but when a medical condition enters into the fray, it makes it doubly more tenuous, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is at least a concrete step that allows one to grip the reality of one’s situation, and perhaps leave all future contingencies, tenuously anticipated, aside.

Sincerely,

Robert R.McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement from Federal Service: By what right?

It is a question often posed in the dead of night by those who would undermine an assertion based upon an instinctive sense of fairness, but perhaps not able to be articulated in comprehensible form.  By what right do you enter these premises?  By what right do you express that opinion?  By what right do you think you can do that?

It is, as with many questions, one that has a sadly contextual background of a negative past – for, whenever a person, a populace or a segment of a greater society begins to assert a “right”, it was generally preceded by a breakdown of community and caring.  For example: A violation of another’s property where a fence has not yet been placed should be resolved by two neighbors discussing the infraction or infringement without resorting to a higher authority.  If that “neighborliness” cannot resolve the conflict, then a fence may be built and the right to build such a fence can be asserted by the fence-building-neighbor as a “right” of property ownership.  No one would, or could, dispute such a right to do so, but the mere fact that a fence had to be built is evidence of a preceding breakdown of the unspoken rules of a community, where resolution of a conflict could not be accomplished by discussing, caring, understanding and compromising for the sake of a community’s greater good, but instead results in a declarative reference to one’s “right” to do X, Y or Z.

Rights should have the insipid connotation of negativity to the extent that asserting them is something of a last resort and the last bastion of scoundrels and suspicious individuals seen in an unfavorable communal light; but in modernity, shouting out one’s “right” to do this or that, or standing on a soapbox and pontificating about how we (why does everyone assume that he or she has a “right” to speak on behalf of that undefined “we” in the first place?) have every “right” to be here, do this or that or be “in your face” because of the proverbial “catch-all” – the “Bill of Rights”.  By what right?

For Federal and Postal employees who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it may well be that asserting one’s right to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits was preceded by a context of negativity – of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal facility failing to, refusing to, or otherwise not showing effort for, accommodating one’s medical condition, illness or disability, and that is when the assertion of declaring one’s “right” to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits becomes the inviolable pathway to an exit out of an untenable workplace situation.

To that extent, preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is somewhat akin to building that “fence” between your property and the next-door neighbor’s, whose dog keeps coming into your yard, digging up the freshly-planted bushes and vegetables, pooping all over the place and attacking your cat, and cares not a twit to try and resolve the issue; that, in many ways, is the Federal agency or the Postal facility you work for.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Resignation

It is both an act, as well as a demeanor.  In the former sense, the fulfillment is accomplished by the actual tendering of an offer to terminate a business or contractual relationship, with a declarative statement of unequivocal certainty.  In the latter form, a feeling, a sense of foreboding, and a concession to life’s hardships.  In either case, it is an act of withdrawal, whether by action via terminal certitude or in the wasting away of the soul’s inner flame of light.

Resignation, submitted as an act of defiance to one’s employer or as a private tender of retreat, is a statement of definitive intent, and one that negates the living embrace of Being.  In political circles and parliamentary procedures, there is often involved a game of dare and a play of obfuscation, like card players in a high-stakes poker game where the tendering of a resignation letter is not expected to be accepted; yet, such attempts at bluffing possess moments of backfiring, with the resulting end to promising political careers because of the inability to foresee substance from play-acting, or want of proper timing.  Resigning, and for what purpose?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering 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, the question of resigning from one’s Federal job or Postal employment should always take on multiple questions and conditions of “why”, “when” and “what for”?

What is the reason; why resign; when should the resignation be tendered; and what is the reason for resigning?  Is it because the doctor has recommended such a course of action?  Will the agency refuse to extend the LWOP status during the process of awaiting a decision from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management?  Will it allow for access to TSP funds during the process, in order to survive financially?  Or are there other justifying, pragmatic considerations to factor into the decision-making process?

These, and many other considerations, should be discussed, evaluated and objectively defined, before a resignation is submitted to one’s agency or the U.S. Postal Service.  For, once the resignation is received, and an SF 50 is generated separating the Federal or Postal employee from Federal Service, then the 1-year Statute of Limitations begins to toll, where the (now former) Federal or Postal employee has one year from the date of separation from Federal Service to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, directly to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Thus, there are direct and irreversible consequences in the tendering of a resignation in the first sense of the term; as for the alternate consideration – of a demeanor more suited for a change of circumstances – that is up to each individual to embrace, and determine in an existential sense that any resignation from life’s beauty and worth of being, must remain a choice left only to the unidentified tombstones of unvisited grounds where neither hallowed voices are heard, nor hushed silence interrupts.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Language of Choice

There are certainly other “languages” for conveying information, including (but not limited to):  foreign, other than English (but in this cosmopolitan world, where technology has made such barriers a moot point, it becomes almost provincial to speak of one’s native tongue); body; emotive; forms, including written or oral; other body, such as facial; coded; and others not listed here.  The choice of language one uses, is often determined by the context and circumstance mandated for various reasons, not the least of which would be the efficacy of the option taken.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have, for many years, had to endure the “language” of hostility from one’s Federal agency or U.S. Postal Service, it is perhaps a self-evident point that it is the “written” form of language which must be opted for in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.  But it is not the obviousness of the issue which one must accept; rather, it is in the very transition from one’s milieu to filing with another bureaucracy which must be directly recognized and altered.

There is a natural tendency for the mistreated Federal and Postal worker filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, to react to another bureaucracy and administrative process (OPM) in a similar vein as one is used to because of the mistreatment for so many years.  But one must mentally transition from the reactive methodology of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service which one has become accustomed to, and approach the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in a different light.

As such, in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, one word of caveat:  let the foreign language of professionalism prevail, and approach OPM with a singular focus of linguistic content which sets aside all of those wasted years of workplace harassment and hostility one may have experienced in a previous life, and adopt the language of choice — of an effective OPM Disability Retirement application devoid of the garbage of past malice.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Attorney: Playgrounds and the Collective Institution of Fair Play

We learn it early on; the unstated rules, the lines which may not be crossed, and to be weary of those whose reputation precedes them for the blatant disregard of both.  How they are learned; what they are; whether explicitly stated or impliedly conveyed; few, if any, have a memory where the Head Mistress of the Universe of Playgrounds sat us all down and said, “Now young ladies and gentlemen, here are the 10 rules of fair play.”  Regardless, we all somehow came to recognized and apply them.

Wittgenstein provides some valuable insight into the way we learn the language games involved in game-playing; much of it is through sheer doing, an ad hoc manner of practical reasoning and applied rationality.  And then, of course, we become adults (yes, at least most of us do; some, left behind on the playgrounds of life, remain as infantile cherubim, clueless and naive to the cynical ways of the world); and it always seems as if the same ones who violated the rules of the playground are the ones who flaunt the normative constraints of the greater universe.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are formulating a strategy for filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether one falls under the general aegis of FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the question often must be confronted as to the Supervisor, Manager, or even a fellow coworker who is pining for a confrontation and direct disregard of the collective institutional enforcement of what everyone else knows as “fair play”.

This, despite the fact that there are multiple Federal laws governing treatment of individuals with known medical disabilities.  But the Federal “system” of retaining workers with medical conditions and disabilities, and the perfunctory requirement of accommodations and the search to provide adequate accommodations, undermines any compelling force to restrain the playground bully.

OPM Disability Retirement benefits, filed either through one’s own agency if one is still on the rolls of the agency; or if separated, but less than 31 days since the official date of separation, in either case must be filed through the Human Resource Department of one’s own agency, or through H.R. Shared Services for Postal Workers (located in Greensboro, North Carolina); or, if separated for more than 31 days, then directly to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in Boyers, PA.

In the end, things rarely change much, if at all.  Those collective institutional enforcement mechanisms learned on the playground — tattling to the playground monitor or to one’s teacher; talking to one’s parents, etc. — end up with a snicker and a sneer.

Yes, society has become well aware of bullies and mean people, but they have been around longer than the oldest profession in the world, and the collective institution of fair play and the playgrounds upon which they played out, will continue to witness backstabbing and surreptitious violations, transferred universally to the places where adults play, and where the most vulnerable in need of the greatest protection, still must do things the old fashioned way:  reliance on sheer luck, or to seek the best legal advice possible.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire