OPM Retirement Benefits for Disabled Employees: Discovering the natural teleology

It is for that function or use in society that we strive in our early years; while some may argue that the extrinsic relationship between career and one’s natural abilities make for an artificial coalescence of man-to-meaning, nevertheless, the adaptation to societal needs results in the correspondence between man’s inherent want and the contribution to a greater good.

But what happens when, later in life, the fusion of ability with societal need is abandoned?  What if work no longer can be performed, goals cannot be met, and wants cannot be fulfilled?  We are in a phase where we preach to our children that they should find a career in which natural talents are utilized, where inner satisfaction is achieved, and a sense of accomplishment is fulfilled.

A generation or so ago, we merely thanked society for offering a decent wage and a higher standard of living.  Then, something went awry — the gap between the worker and management became a wider chasm of discontent; magazines and video clips revealed the limitless narcissism of wealth and unfettered greed; and mediocrity of talentless actors revealed that even they, too, can achieve stardom despite lack of any appreciable achievement.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing the pathway of a chosen career with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, the separation from one’s work and position may take an unspoken toll — not just because of the medical condition, but further, as a result of losing the natural teleology the Federal or Postal worker had striven so strenuously to achieve.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is never an easy road.

Others may believe that securing an annuity because of one’s inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties is tantamount to winning a lottery of sorts, but the reality is that most Federal or Postal employees who file for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, if given the choice, would forego the benefit if the medical condition would resolve itself and health would dictate the course of one’s future and fate, and not its corollary, of illness and a chronic medical condition.

Throughout youth, one always strove to discover the natural teleology for value and place in society; when that essence of human need is suddenly lost or severed, it is time to reignite that loss of self, and to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application in order to enter into the next stage of life’s arena of meaning, value and worth.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Learning from Experience

The problems inherent in filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS or CSRS are multi-fold and multi-tiered.  Even today, after years and years of practicing in this particular area of law, there is rarely a day which goes by that I haven’t learned something new — whether a slight wrinkle in OPM Disability Retirement law; whether in a nuance of a description of a particular medical condition; or in simply how a doctor has described a specific condition and its particular and unique impact upon a patient.  Experience comes from making mistakes; mistakes can be human, technical, or a combination of both.

Unfortunately, for the Federal or Postal worker who is filing, or contemplating filing, for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS, the process itself is essentially a “one-time” endeavor.  Yes, a person can theoretically file, then refile at a later time (side-stepping the issue of res judicata, which can, in most instances, be gotten around); but for the most part, a Federal or Postal employee who is filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is doing it once, and only once.

As such, it is NOT the time to obtain “experience” — i.e., there is little room for “learning” from “mistakes”.

There is “good experience” and “bad experience”, but both are experiences nonetheless.  In filing an application for Federal or USPS Disability Retirement benefits, however, it is the former which needs to be experienced, and not the latter, and in such a filing process, there is indeed a difference between the two.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire