FERS Medical Disability from OPM: Goal Posts and Definitions

In modernity, we have taught our kids that rules don’t matter, that we can subvert, avert, avoid and appease; if you don’t like the goal post, dig it up and move it; or, if you don’t like the rules, change the definition.  No one complies, anymore.  We no longer say or have the attitude of: Okay, rules are rules, we have to obey them.

Instead, because we are a country of lawyers, where argumentation and logical conformity are not based upon unquestioned acceptance of normative rigidity, we say:  Why should X be defined as Y?  Why does a goalpost have to be situated within X-number of feet of the demarcation-line?  Let’s move the goal post; let’s change the definition; let’s perform linguistic gymnastics and open-language surgery upon rules, definitions and mandates we don’t agree with.

Where did that defiance against conformity come from?  From whence did it originate?  Was it because the Post-WWII generation and beyond decided that all punishments were cruel, that delayed-gratification was a sin, and everyone should get a prize for participation, and there should be no acknowledgement of “winners” as opposed to “losers”?

Fortunately, in some areas of life, goal posts must yet remain within the confines of the end zone, and definitions must remain somewhat unchangeable and static.

For example — in the arena of Federal Disability Retirement Law.  Yes, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management can often ignore “the law”; and yes, OPM can sometimes mis-state the regulations governing Federal Employee Disability Retirement Law.  But when they do, there is always the potential danger that if it gets to the Third Stage of the complex bureaucratic process, the Administrative Judge at the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board will “correct” the error, the mis-statement, the mis-application, and right the wrong.

Additionally, it is a good idea to have a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Employee Disability Retirement Law throughout the retirement process, in order to make sure that OPM is not moving the goal post, and is not bending the definitions as delineated in statutory authority.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal OPM Disability Retirement Law, and make sure that the goal posts are not being moved, and the definitions are not being compromised.

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 Attorney Representation for FERS Employees: Paring the Puff

There are various styles of writing and genres to describe the variegated approaches — of the literary; of technical writing; poetry; didacticism; stream-of-consciousness (think Joyce and Faulkner); of short and succinct sentences (Hemingway) in contrast to long and flowery lines where beauty of the form is more important than the content of meaning (many modern writers); and then, there is the master of the perfect sentence in each story and many of his novels (William Trevor).

Puff is a problem in modernity, and the meandering sentence is too often taken for lack of substance.  In every writing form, keeping the intended audience in view is an important component in the choosing of style and substance.  Should logical argumentation be used in a fictional work?

Must non-fiction necessarily invoke a dry and uninteresting style of narrative (read the biography written on Hemingway by Carlos Baker, or any of the recent historical works by Peter Cozzens and you will find that history need not be dry and boring).

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are intending upon filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, a “Statement of the Applicant’s Disability” (SF 3112A) must be well-prepared, thoughtfully formulated and exactingly edited.  It need not be a Hemingway masterpiece or a meticulously-formed Trevor short story, but paring the puff should certainly be considered.  How does one pare the puff?

By knowing the law and keeping in sharp focus each sentence’s declarative value in applying the law.  Contact a Federal lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin paring the puff that will only detract and distract from the intended audience:  The U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

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 Law: The Compelling Reason

We have come to interpret such a concept as one which must rise above the mundane.  A “reason”, in isolation, is simply not enough; instead, it must be “compelling” — that break between a pause and a human action.

People act or remain dull and passive for all sorts of reasons, whether silly, valid, inappropriate or otherwise uninspiring; but when the words which form a basis for sudden action, where even the dullard is spurred into a frenzy of intensity otherwise resembling a sleeping dog on a rainy afternoon where even rabbits ignore its presence — then we know that the “reason” was indeed “compelling”.

Most words and concepts merely lead to other words and concepts; sometimes, they are related; at other times, whether by accident or by deliberation, a logical and causal connection may be recognized between conceptual spheres.  But it is the rare animal when an action results from a word — otherwise known as a reason.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition or injury prompts a call to a lawyer who is an OPM Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer, the “reason” which is “compelling” is quite obvious: The medical condition has come to a critical juncture such that the Federal or Postal worker is concerned enough to know that it has begun to impact the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.

That is a good thing — to act upon the compelling reason and not let inertia become the prefatory basis of a reason otherwise unstated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Federal Disability Attorney

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The Privacy of Weirdness

Privacy provokes weirdness; or so it would seem.  Things which people would not otherwise do, they do in the apparent seclusion of privacy.  It is when the “private” becomes “public” that embarrassment, revelation, uncovering and shame is brought out.

People engage in activities ranging from the mundane to the absurd — and this is often witnessed in that “bubble” created by sitting in one’s car.  The vehicle creates a strange phenomenon — for, although it does not truly provide a privacy space, people get into their vehicles and act as if no one can see them.  Witness how we suddenly dance uninhibited to the music playing when driving; or talk to yourself, or perhaps other acts of weirdness.

Then, of course, there are the more absurd revelations of recent vintage — of weirdness performe while on Zoom when privacy was thought to be the case.

Pain is on the spectrum of weirdness — for, it is a “private” or “subjective” matter, experienced within the bubble of one’s own body and self.  We often try to hide it — but it manifests itself through grimaces and facial contortions.  It can be hidden and masked, but whether it is healthy to do so, is quite another matter.

When the privacy of weirdness — of pain which can no longer be masked — enters the public arena, as in a Federal Disability Retirement case, it is then time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  Contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of turning out the privacy of weirdness into a Federal Disability Retirement case.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

OPM Medical Disability for Federal Workers: The Patterned Life

All lives have a pattern; as a metaphor, most patterns are predictable, serene, fairly unimaginative and surely consistent with most others.  Then, there are the outliers — the patterns which zigzag and defy the conventional appearances of a life lived, whether well, badly or somewhere in between.  Are there any lives which possess no pattern at all?  Perhaps.

In the end, of course, a pattern is merely an extrapolated shadow of retrospectively predictable reflective constructs.  Events disrupt patterns — a crisis; a death; an illness; an intervening occurrence, etc.

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 continuing in his or her career, the event which disrupts of pattern of his or her life is the medical condition; the course of the pattern to be determined is the step which is next taken.  Whether your patterned life precipitously careens in extreme ways at the end of a beautifully composed symphony depends upon what is done next.

Consult with a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective FERS Disability Retirement application — one which will end with a pattern of success.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employees with Permanent but Partial Disabilities: The Delay of Time

We grumble and complain about “losing” an hour in Spring’s moving forward for the time change, and are glad to accept the “gain” of it in the Fall.  In either case, we recognize that we have neither lost the hour, nor gained it; it is merely the artificial alteration of clocks uniformly and by international agreement accepted.

The true loss is in the delay of time — of our actions, our thoughts, our lack of initiative in moving forward when necessity dictates a change in our lives.

Medical conditions tend to do that — they force us to delay time, hoping that it will go away, change course, and one day deemed to have been merely a bad dream, a nightmare to be forgotten.  But they remain with us — slowing us down, delaying the inevitable: Our career needs to change; we need to adapt to our circumstances.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition and have been hoping that the delay of time might change some things, it should be clear that time is never a friend of an injury or disease — it merely provokes us into the false notion that time will ultimately heal.

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law and consider that the delay of time will only make an emergency out of what is now merely an urgency.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement under FERS: Errors Compounded

We all make mistakes; that is a given, and one of life’s irrefutable truisms.  Aside from the Pope and the untouchables in the movie industry, errors are committed daily, and spouses are there to make sure that we recognize the ill-conceived nature of perfection’s boast, no matter how much we try and cover them up.

An error is forgivable; a repeated error, sometimes laughed at; but errors compounded which could have been avoided are often the ones that retain the lasting vestiges of damage unable to be undone.  Every now and again, you come across a misprint in a newspaper; that is almost to be expected, because newspapers have a deadline, and even with the aid of technological editing in conjunction with the human eye, the rush to print will almost always prefer the tortoise’s path of guarantee.

When one comes across an error in a book — a misplaced word, a misspelled adjective or a skewed layout; well, that is an exception, given the fact that there are less constraints to rush to print, and multiple eyes should have caught the mistake.  If the book becomes a classic, it may well be more valuable with the misprint or error; if it is further enhanced with the author’s autograph, it becomes priceless.

For the rest of us, we simply try and trudge through the self-evident fact of life, that we all commit errors; what we try and do is to prevent errors from compounding.

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, the key is to try and not makes errors in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  Yet, how can you do that if you don’t know the entirety of the administrative process called “Federal Disability Retirement”?

Errors compounded, in the end, often comes about because of lack of knowledge, and to gain that knowledge, it is often a good idea to consult with an “expert” who specializes in the subject-area that one pursues.  For preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, you may want to first consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, if only to avoid those errors compounded.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Preparing the case

For some reason, Federal and Postal workers who “prepare” and submit a Federal Disability Retirement application, do so without much thought as to what is entailed by the entire process.

They will often rely upon what the “Human Resource Office” tells them — of forms to fill out, what form to give to the doctor, the form to give to the supervisor, etc., and will spend more time trying to figure out the confusing life insurance form than in preparing the Applicant’s Statement of Disability (SF 3112A) or the legal precedents that govern Federal Disability Retirement Law — and then, when it gets denied at the Initial Stage of the process and the Federal or Postal Disability Retirement applicant goes back to the H.R. “Specialist” and asks, “Well, what do I do now?”, the response is: “That is not our problem; that’s a problem you have to deal with.”

Accountability is not known to be a commonly recognized characteristic in a Human Resource Office, and while there are never any guarantees in life, in any sector or endeavor, at a minimum, when one is being “assisted” and guided through an administrative process, it is important to know whether or not whoever you are relying upon will see you through to the end.

Why the Federal or Postal employee who begins the process of preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application does so without the same care, scrutiny and comprehensive approach as one does in “other” legal cases, is a puzzle.

Federal Disability Retirement — whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset — is as complex a case as any other, and should be approached with the same intensity, technical application and expertise as a patent and trademark case, or a complicated medical malpractice filing.  For, a Federal Disability Retirement case involves every aspect of any other type of complex litigation — of the proper medical evidence to gather; of meeting the established legal standard in order to meet the burden of proof; of citing the relevant legal precedents in order to persuade the reviewer at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; and presenting a compelling description to a “jury” at OPM that one has met the nexus between “having a medical condition” and the inconsistency inherent with the positional duties required, etc.

In the end, preparing the case for submission of a Federal Disability Retirement application involves greater complexity than what the layman can normally account for, and as the fine print in those television commercials state involving sporty vehicles maneuvering at high speeds, you may not want to try this on your own.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: Meaning & work

A book of very recent vintage, written by an anthropologist, uses an 8-letter epithet in its title.  While it is always dangerous to refer to something without having read it, the various book reviewers have provided enough insights to recognize that it involves a judgment upon employment, work and the meaninglessness of many jobs held by the population at large.

There would be, of course, some criticism as to the validity of such a judgment, given the nature of being an “outsider” as opposed to an “insider” — i.e., from the “outside” (e.g., the author/anthropologist himself who makes a living by selling books criticizing certain subjects) perspective, it may seem like certain types of work retain no inherent meaning, but from the “inside” perspective (i.e., those whose jobs it is to perform such tasks, and the companies, corporations and entities that require that such tasks be maintained), elements of employment that outsiders may deem meaningless may contain elaborate foundations of meaningfulness.

That was, of course, one of the criticisms thrown by Marx — of the separation of labor from the value of existence, arising coincidentally from the industrial revolution where mass production and assembly lines in factories that exploited labor resulted in a disillusioning effect because people no longer saw the fruits of one’s own labor (an aside: Does that explain why so many people think that the original source of beef, poultry and dairy products come from the storeroom of Safeway?).

How does one work, make a living and concurrently retain “meaning” in all, if not most, of the tasks performed?  Anyone who has been employed for any significant length of time comes to recognize that the three are distinct and separable: work is different from “making a living”, in that you can work for endless and tireless hours and yet not make enough wages to pay all of the bills; and whether you work long hours or not, and whether you can pay all of the debts incurred or have extra spending money at the end of each pay period, the “meaning” one derives from the work engaged is not necessarily attached to either the hours expended or the money earned.

For some, perhaps, meaning is never derived from the work itself, but merely from a recognition that the work is merely a means to an end — of performing tasks in order to earn enough wages to own a home, start a family and provide for a retirement, etc.  Or, for others, perhaps a deep-seated recognition is acceptable, that life itself is like the task that Sisyphus engaged in, and the toil of work is as the meaninglessness of rolling the boulder up another hill, only to see it roll back down again, and thus repetition allows for the futility of all tasks great or small.

One’s resolve and the will to impose meaningfulness in the face of alienation is a testament to man’s capacity to seek greater good.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the need to continue to find “meaning” in striving often is closely tied to the progressively deteriorating aspect of one’s health.  When one’s health is at issue, “meaningfulness” of one’s work may come into question, precisely because one’s capacity to view employment as a means to another end itself becomes a struggle.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, allows for one to reorient the priorities in life that should not be confused: Health, family, a sense of accomplishment, and somewhere in that mix, a career that may need to be changed, abandoned or otherwise modified because of one’s deteriorating health and the impact upon the meaningfulness of carrying on where to do so sacrifices one or more of the mixed priorities.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Owning a landline

It is perhaps the single telling factor of a generational divide; if you own a landline, it is likely you are not a millennial.  Or from the generation just before, or even the one before that.  You are probably from the generation sometime within the timeframe of “just after” the Korean War and around the end of the Vietnam War.  It is the remembrance of unreliable “bag” phones and cellular connections that barely became audible; but more than that, it is the evidence of who one is based upon the generational divide that naturally occurs between sets of population growths.

Can there be similarity of morals, ethics and behavioral patterns merely because one is born into a designated generation, as opposed to other such assignations of identifiable features?  Is it really true that one generation has a characteristic trait that is identifiable, recognizable and with imprints that define it with clarity of traits?  Are there “lazy” generations, “psychotic” ones and those that are mere sheep in a fold of followers?  Does owning a landline betray such a characteristic, anymore than being a hard worker, a person who always attends to one’s responsibilities and never turns away from obligations ensconced in the conscience of one’s being?

Yet, at some point, we all become adults, make decisions separate and apart from a “generational identifier”, and go on to become responsible for the pathways taken, the decisions undertaken and the consequences wrought.  Can it be so difficult to abandon a landline, to cancel it, to unplug it?  Or is it the imprint of a generation, so steeped in regularity and reliance that the youthful days of one’s generation cannot ever be completely severed and forgotten?

Owning a landline is like the Federal or Postal employee who comes from a generation where filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is almost unthinkable.  It is that characteristic trait that you have to continue working, striving, contributing and making it into work “no matter what”.

Yet, the silliness of such a thought process is about the same as paying for a landline despite the fact that you no longer use it, never rings and sits in a corner silently except for the occasional caller who happened to ring up the wrong number and got a hold of another occasional individual who, upon picking up the receiver, realizes that it feels somewhat strange not to be using one’s cellphone as opposed to this “thing” that you have to put back into the cradle of a time long forgotten.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the point always is not to allow for some silly notion of a generational identifier to keep the Federal or Postal employee from doing that which must be done for the sake of a higher calling: One’s Health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire