Federal Disability Retirement: The “Get-Through” Day

Everyone recognizes that Mondays are such a day — of a “get-through” day: Of survival; attending to each issue or problem without freaking out completely; of knowing that the day will be relentless, but that an end will also arrive, with hopes that minimization of residuals into the next day will allow for a better tomorrow.

The world has become, in many ways, more complex, of greater difficulties, encompassing a morass of problems to be solved.  It has become more difficult for many to “make a living”.  Once, a few generations ago, a single-income household could support a fairly comfortable living.  Today, a dual-income household is a necessity, and even that is often insufficient to attain the minimal accouterments of middle-class living.

Is it because more “stuff” is required?  All of those electronic devices and mechanical necessities — are we tacking on greater expenses in an endless cycle of consumption?

And so the Monday may pass, but it is when that “get-through” day becomes an endless summation of days after days after days such that the weekend merely becomes a short respite in order to recuperate for the next round of endless “get-through” days — when that happens, it may be time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

The human body — and mind — can only withstand a certain level of stress and turmoil, and when life become a mere haberdashery of endless get-through days where each get-through day cannot anymore be gotten-through, then it is time for a change.  For Federal Government employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who can no longer get through another “get-through” day, consideration should be given to Federal Disability Retirement.

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Employee Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether or not you can continue to get through anymore “get-through” days, when each day has become an unending cycle of such days where you can no longer get through them.

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.

 

FERS Disability Retirement from OPM: Presenting the Best Case

You can only work with the facts given; you cannot make it up; you cannot fabricate it; you cannot try and obfuscate — and in the end, it is often the case that presenting the best case is “enough”.

In life, with few exceptions, we learn how to “make do” with what we have gotten:  Whether of our birth, our looks, our talents, our personality, our charm, our brains, our so-called “gifts and talents”, etc.  Some possess a great abundance of whatever is needed; others, a paltry pittance.  A short period of “overcompensation” may produce, every now and again, a 5’6” basketball star, or a scrawny football player whose talents can compete with the best of them; but for the most part, “effort” cannot exceed “limitations”, whether of a physical or an intellectual level.

And so the rest of us are relegated to live in a perpetual milieu of mediocrity, despite our best efforts to conceal it, or for however long the glow of our parent’s constant accolades to furnish us with self-esteem beyond the reality of our true talents will last, reverberating in the echos of our memories — “You’re the best”;  “You can be anything you want to be”;  “Don’t worry, you’ll do better next time”.  Indeed, Americans are known to have a high degree of self-esteem in comparison to other countries, but concurrently lag behind in test scores for the “hard sciences”.

For Federal Gov. employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that this medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, sometimes presenting the best case possible is all that can be done.  Pain is subjective; psychological conditions are likewise not amenable to “objective” diagnostic testing; and perhaps you don’t have a fully-supportive doctor — and yet you simply cannot continue to work, anymore.

Sometimes, all that can be done is to present the best case, and if may well be that it is “enough” to get you past the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  Contact a FERS attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of initiating, preparing, formulating and filing the best case possible of a Federal Disability Retirement Case.

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 Employees Retirement System (FERS) Disability Law: Life’s Frenetic Pace

Is it any more than in times past?  Without an actual reference point, lacking in contrast to historical contexts, unfounded by knowledge no longer available — is the frenetic pace by which we live any different from previous eras?

Certainly, in times prior to the industrial revolution, before refrigeration was invented, technology as part of our accepted daily lives — the focus was more upon having food sufficient to provide for our daily needs.  In the modern era, the source of food is rarely a problem; rather, if it is a problem, the concern is one of how to afford it.

Access is different from availability.  Technology itself, of course, is always touted as time-savers; that by downloading this “App” or purchasing that gadget, you’ll be left with greater time spent in lazy leisures of accommodated peace and prosperity.  Life’s frenetic pace in modernity, of course, has a price — and that price is often the cost of one’s health because of the stress we are under.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition no longer allows for continuation at the frenetic pace by which we live, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS may be the best option to take.

Contact a Federal Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of paring down the frenetic pace of life.

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 Employees Retirement System (FERS) Disability Law: The Arbitrary Discount

When it is to one’s favor, of course, the arbitrary discount is a welcome benefit.  Every now and again, it happens — more often in an independent store, where the owner will say, “Well, you’ve been a great customer; I am going to give you a 10% discount just because…”.  Just because what?  No reason — just because it is Saturday; just because you are pleasant; just because I wanted to, etc.

That is the nature of an arbitrary discount.  However, what about an arbitrary discount when it is not in your favor?

In a Federal Disability Retirement case, the OPM “Medical Specialist” may deny a Federal Disability Retirement application with the following reasoning: “Your treating doctor is not a specialist in treating X.  The restrictions placed on you are therefore invalid and you have not shown that you are disabled.”  WHAT?  And yet — it is just another arbitrary discount — the discounting of your treating doctor as a valid person to make reasonable medical decisions; it just so happens that such an arbitrary discount is not in your favor.

Even though, of course, the law supports you in every way and even though OPM’s opinion should be discounted entirely.  But hey — OPM is the independent owner of the “store”, and they can do what they want, right?

Contact an OPM Disability Retirement Attorney who can and will fight against such arbitrary discounts.

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 under FERS: This Day’s Trial

It is enough to contend with; this day’s trial, as opposed to tomorrow’s, or the day after that; or of constant rumination upon yesterday’s trial, or last week’s.  Life is complicated and challenging; to worry beyond the trials of today makes it almost too much.  Between obligations of work, family, taking care of one’s elder parents, fear of the pandemic, attempting to juggle the multiple demands coming at you from every which way — beyond this day’s trial is something that must be set aside until the next dawn’s light opens one’s eyes.

For those with medical conditions, of course, the trial itself is exponentially pronounced; for, the yearning for the time when the day’s trial merely contained all of that which has been described — but without the medical condition — would be preferred on any given day.  But that this day’s trial could be without the medical condition.

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, this day’s trial always begins and ends with the medical condition itself.  Consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Contact a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer, and begin to minimize this day’s trial so that tomorrow’s trial is less of a burden than this day’s trial.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Life erasing

In youth and early adulthood, we add; in later years, life erases.  Kids grow up and move elsewhere; vigor depletes; living spaces are downsized; mementoes once meaningful are discarded into a trash heap of forgotten memories; and health deteriorates, with diminution of lives by incremental depreciation both in appearance, worth and human value.

Life erasing is the natural decomposition of matter; the energy that we expended in bringing up our kids has now been complete, and transference of that vigor has become a permanent fixture.

Somehow, what we gave never seems to be enough, and no matter how much we tried, loved, cared for and nurtured, that part of all has separated and journeyed away, never to be sought in unenlightened venues of thoughtless abandonment.  It is as if life reaches its pinnacle, as the arc of never-ending geometric feats of engineering and technological defiance; and then it tapers, becomes warped and disappears into the far horizon.  What ever happened to those youthful dreams once embraced, promised, forever committed to, and now a dash of trailing dust left behind like so many of life’s erasing features?

Medical conditions and deteriorating health tends to symbolize that; for, as one reaches the pinnacle of an incomplete life (is it every complete, even at the point of oblivion, and do we not hang on for a moment more?), the tawdry reality is that we fear the vanishing of all that we have surrounded ourselves with, because we do not walk about this world with a mirror to appease our own insecurities.

Isn’t that why people amass great wealth; invoke power-plays to demand and command loyalty; hoard possessions as if they reflected quantifiable worth; and apply every cosmetic trick into believing that appearance of youth is the same as easing life’s erasing by concealing the decay beneath?  Why is it that such a natural deterioration is fought against, when the peaceful calm of wisdom tells us that life erasing is the easing of burdens amassed in youth and adulthood, and thus to be enjoyed?

Life erasing means that responsibilities garnered previously have now been alleviated, but instead of accepting that natural digression, we buy into the advertising colonnade that age is merely of deceptive appearances and a “mind set” that can be averted merely by acting more foolishly, accepting cosmetic alterations by stretching the wrinkles away, and taking on greater obligations for self-aggrandizement.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are beset with medical conditions which prevent the Federal or Postal employee from extending a career chosen, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, filing for Federal Disability Retirement is actually an acceptance of the natural course of life erasing – by the proverbial course of “downsizing”, of recognizing the medical conditions impacting one’s life and pursuing Federal Disability Retirement so that life’s erasing can attain a level of focus upon a priority long ignored:  Health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Benefitting from doubt

What does it mean to “give” one the “benefit of doubt”?  Is it something that is granted automatically, or must one “earn it” through labor, circumstances or sheer luck?  What are the elements that lead to it, and why are some people accorded such grace while others are treated with impunity of disregard?

Take the following hypothetical:  You are at a party with friends and acquaintances; you sit with a number of people, and among them are a very close friend and confidante, as well as a mixture of those whom you somewhat dislike and otherwise consider an “undesirable” of sorts.  Well, let’s be honest – you despise especially this one person, and hope daily that that individual will die a horrible death in a slow, agony-filled manner.  You may even daydream of torture and mayhem, and how your laughter at such pleas for mercy fills your inner soul with delight so devious that it even frightens you to consider your own meanness and ferocity of unsympathetic attitude towards this one subhuman miscreant.

During a lively conversation – we shall call the “friend” X, and the one whom you wish the horrible and slow torture ending in death, Y – the former (X) says something that refers to you in an obscure and somewhat polysemic context.  You pause and consider; then dismiss it; for, as a friend, you give the benefit of the doubt that the utterance was said innocently and without any underlying meaning of harm or tincture of criticism.  Then, later, Y says something as well –  perhaps a reference to you, your group of people or your team effort in a project – and with obvious sarcasm, says, “Yeah, right”.

Now, had X said the same thing, it might have been taken as a joke; but when Y says it, you burn with inner turmoil and it is just a miracle upon a hair’s breath that you don’t throw the contents of your drink across the circular gathering, right at the individual’s face.  For Y, you failed to give the “benefit of the doubt”.  Why?  Is it because such granting of unconditional grace must necessarily be encircled by a context of relational warmth, and lack of it provides grounds for withdrawing or withholding any such unilateral mandate?  Is the spectrum of doubt’s convergence and emergence correlated to the level and extent of trust and friendship already established, or can it also occur in the vacuum of dealing with strangers?  As to the latter – dealing with strangers – we often coin as an act of the foolish or resulting from innocence and inexperience, don’t we?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers considering the option of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through one’s Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, then on to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the issue of giving various individuals the “benefit of the doubt” will come up in numerous contexts and encounters – from discussing one’s medical issues with a Supervisor or Manager, to informing the Human Resource Department of one’s Federal agency that one intends upon filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits; and such encounters, by necessity, will often involve that nagging feeling as to whether to grant (or not) the benefit of the doubt.

In the end, “doubt” is more likened to an intuition – like the hair reflexively standing on the nape of one’s neck as a warning against impending danger – and has more to do with our Darwinian background than any societal conventions we deem applicable, and when dealing with Federal agencies, it is often prudent to not grant that ultimate grace of unilateral conformity – and, instead, to withhold giving the benefit of the doubt in almost all circumstances.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: The speechless silence of treachery

Treachery must by definition remain speechless; and it is in the silence of back stabbing in the cloak of darkness that one’s malevolent intentions become known.  In war, the act of such duplicitous betrayal is termed as an offense justifying execution; in business, the meter of rascality on a pendulum of public opinion ranges on a spectrum of embezzlement, insider trading or a keen sense of capitalistic endurance; and in friendship, it is merely the weeping vicissitudes of emotional upheavals.  It is the faithless double-cross of dual lives; of informants tipping the scale to the advantage of one’s sworn enemy and allowing for massacre of innocents to occur.

Where does conscience fit in, and where do scoundrels scurry to when the open light of day shines the revelation of actions deceitful like the snake in the grass and the insidious cannibalism of overturning honor, dignity and a snow-white heart of an eternally blackened soul?

To turn one’s back against friendships previously thought to remain inviolable and eternally of faithful concerns; to whisper secrets into corners blocked by history, hatred and enmity of ethnic cleansing; but to engage in such treachery requires a context of fidelity and honor without vice, where a society’s norms and conventions of acceptable behavior provide the fodder for allegations of misconduct; the question is, Do we have such constraining rules of engagement, anymore, to argue for a viable charge of treachery?  Or, has language subsumed all, and opinions are elevated to the level of moral equivalency, such that the speechless silence of treachery means nothing more than the din of cackling laughter reverberated down the hollow corridors of timeless dissent?

Rare is the person in modernity who holds to obligation more than to personal desire and self-satisfaction; and if profit for one’s own constitutes the sum total of a moral foundation, why not treachery?  But then, Why in speechless silence?  Or, is there something innately refutable, instinctively discernible, in an act of malevolent double-crossing, such that even by acts of Wittgensteinian language games where contingency of meaning of verbs and adjectives still rise above the linguistic gymnastics of twisted minds?

There are dangers in lives of duplicitous bifurcations; beyond the spy who comes in from the cold, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who begin the process of 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 often queried is:  When, and to Whom, does one confide?  The natural follow-on question is:  Of What, and to which extent?

It is peculiar how the administrative process of Federal Disability Retirement brings out into the open light the verbal distinction between “friends” and “true friends”; or, “allies” and the counterpart, “real allies”.  There are few rules to follow when considering the dangers inherent in the speechless silence of treachery, and preparing, formulating and filing for OPM Disability Retirement benefits almost always reveals that traitorous acts are not limited to the fields of war, and silence left speechless should never result from surprise attacks engaged from corridors left unsuspected by innocent utterances.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Benefits: Writing a life

It is lived; or so we attempt to do so.  This thing called “life”; neither an art form, and forever unaccompanied by instructions or even a cheap compass; most are abandoned at the junkyards of forgotten corners, where the trifecta of raw sewage, mistreatment of body and spirit, and the crass exposure to the detritus of human discontent coalesce to present the irony of birth preceding an inevitable death.

Heidegger taught that we engage in projects in order to avoid the ultimate outcome; for Nietsche, nihilism opened doors for optimism contrary to the preceding generations of convoluted castaways; and while Zen and Hindu mysticism explained away the agony of the body, the remaining torture of living the reality of the now somehow wasn’t enough to extinguish the suffering groans of an impervious universe devoid of feeling, empathy, regard or constancy.

If the implements to create are not provided, and cannot be afforded no matter the toil from birth to death, of what use is the life given if living it cannot be achieved?  Moreoever, how can one engage in the writing of a life, let alone the living of it?

Autobiographies are mostly forgotten narratives undertaken merely to dispose of haunting ghosts of passing groans; and biographies, only for those who become a footnote in the dustbin of society.  And thus are we forsaken, like the cross abandoned on the hilltop where agony was first embraced in an effort to expiate the sufferings of our forefathers.  And then we are asked to write a life — no, not merely to live it, but to engage in art as reflective of ugliness.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are attempting to prepare an SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, the arduous expenditure of describing even a slice of it can mean the difference between securing one’s future or losing a lifetime’s career of investing in the Federal sector or the U.S. Postal Service.

Whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the labor of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application must by necessity describe the impact of the medical condition, its nexus to the Federal or Postal worker’s inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position, and to “prove” it by a preponderance of the evidence.

Such a daunting task is tantamount to writing a life — perhaps, one could appease, merely a slice of one, a portion of a greater whole, and an abbreviated compendium in an abridged form.  Nevertheless, the task involves the aggregation of descriptive narrative, a coherent structure of prose encapsulating facts, evidence and a legal argumentation with a focus towards meeting a statutory criteria for eligibility; indeed, some could argue that the entire project is one demanding something well beyond the mere writing of a life; it is, moreover, to convey and communicate the most private of concerns before a public forum in a maze of bureaucratic complexities amidst an administrative nightmare in a sequence of conundrums.

Yes, living a life is hellish and unaccompanied by direction or explicit purpose; writing a life is even worse — for it entails the remembrance of things past, the present undone, and a future filled with uncertainties but for the successful execution of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Separation from Federal or Postal Employment: Passion

No, this is not April, and Easter has long passed.  Have we done a disservice by admonishing our youth to pursue it?  That the worth of a thing is inherently determined by our response to it, and not in the thing itself?  If passion is defined by an emotional fervor, barely controllable and unable to be contained, have we set up the wrong criteria by which to live life?  Work, vocation, career — are they as fungible as life’s castaways, rejected based upon a momentary or fleeting sense of acceptance or denial?

In Western Classical tradition, the “ordering” of the soul in Plato’s Republic, or the search for balance in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, was always the standard to pursue, and was essentially commensurate with the Eastern approaches of Zen’s denial of the body, the warrior’s acceptance of karma and the fate of life as determined by death; and the circle of life as represented by the Rigvedic deity of fire.

Now, how we feel, the passion one embraces, constitutes the totality of acceptance in a world denounced of living spirits and reduced to materialism and Darwinian determinism of the lowest order.  Often, what is lacking is more revealing than the manifestation of a thing; and thus do bifurcated paradigms such as being and nothingness, worth and junk, life and inertness — it is the erasure of one which magnifies the other.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have lost the “passion” for their vocation because of the introduction of 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 or U.S. Postal worker — the “loss” has a determinate criteria by which to evaluate, and is not merely based upon the lack of an emotional response.

The Federal laws governing Federal Disability Retirement benefits is an employment criteria signed on by the Federal and Postal employee when you became part of the Federal Government Sector, and it allows for the Federal or Postal employee to apply for, and become eligible to receive, a Federal Disability Retirement annuity when a medical condition arises 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.

In such circumstances, “loss of passion” may simply be a factual observation; the loss of vocation because of a medical condition is then a further consequence, and preparing, formulating and filing for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS, becomes a necessary next step upon the consequential abandonment of that passion.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire