FERS Medical Retirement: Reconsideration & OPM’s Hope

Federal Disability Retirement can be a long, arduous, and frustrating administrative process and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management does not help to make it a smooth one.  You will likely get denied at the Initial Stage of the process, and furthermore, the initial Denial Letter from OPM will have you scratching your head in a state of anger and confusion as to its inherent lack of coherence or logic.

That is because it is OPM’s hope that you will simply give up and go away.  However, the mantra which you must always adopt is:  Never give up, and keep persisting, no matter what OPM says in their denial.  If you don’t win at the Reconsideration Stage, then you still have a chance at appealing it to the next stage – before an Administrative Judge at the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.

At both stages of the bureaucratic process, it is a good idea to contact an experienced FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, who can properly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your case, and thus respond accordingly.  For, while persistence and refusing to go away is the first step in beating back OPM’s denials, such persistence must also be followed by a competent understanding and application of the legal criteria to rebut OPM’s attempt to marginalize your Federal Disability Retirement claim under the FERS system.

Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and don’t succumb to OPM’s hope that you will just give up and go away.

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 Medical Retirement: The Better Fallacy

We can always wait for better; that tomorrow will bring a resolution to the problem, or maybe even the day after.  In doing so, we look for the signs of better; of a subtle improvement here, an incalculable, immeasurable but justifying quantification there; and, of course, procrastination becomes the favored cousin in the private, insular world of the better fallacy.

Can an objective criteria be applied?  Will Popper’s Falsification Test bring out an objective assessment, or will we continue to delay and delay where the better fallacy can convolute our thoughts and delay the necessary judgment for making a decision?

The truth is, the wisdom of the ages betrays the better, and the fallacy we are fooled by always denies the historical truth: Things always get worse.  But look at history, you are wont to argue — of centuries of toil and despair, of Leviathan’s description of solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short; but of modernity, where so many diseases have been vanquished and poverty incomparably mitigated by contrast.  Perhaps.  But the Better Fallacy still prevails.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from a medical condition where 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, never wait for “better” to become fulfilled, lest the better fails to achieve what the replacement should be considered — preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

For, like perfection’s harm, the wait for better will often lead to a bitter result, where the dreams of better are merely a mirage better left to nighttime’s despair of terrifying nightmares.

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.

 

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Disability Retirement Benefits: Troubles to Avoid

Is it better to live life ready to confront every trouble encountered, realized or yet in a state of potentiality?  Or, is it wiser to avoid troubles entirely — you know, that person who, at the first sign of trouble, slinks off into the void of anonymity never to be seen or heard from again, until the trouble is solved or resolves itself?

Or, is “discretion the better part of valor”, as a proverb would see it — where, judgment in tackling certain kinds of trouble, while avoiding others, is what constitutes “wisdom”?

In a Federal Disability Retirement case, there are multiple problems and issues to resolve involving the Agency or the Postal Service; of the “proof” necessary to meet the eligibility criteria; of agency actions which may or may not impact one’s Federal Disability Retirement application and the persuasive evidence needed to confront OPM in the event of a denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider how important it is to retain counsel who will see you through the bureaucratic morass which a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS must undergo, and always involving what troubles to confront, and what troubles to avoid — and how.

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.

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: Starting the Process

Perhaps you tinker around the issue; you have “thought about it”; you have looked it up on the Internet; but for some reason, you cannot actually take the next step — of starting the process.  Delaying the inevitable; procrastinating for one reason or another; you may have been already told by your doctor that you might want to “consider” going out on disability — but you still have not taken the next step — the “concrete” step — in starting the process.

Federal Disability Retirement is a hard fate to accept; for, in the end, it means the loss of your career (at least in the form that you have become accustomed to), a partial loss of your identity (you’ve been know for many years by the title and designation of you job), and a reduction in your income (although, under FERS Disability Retirement, you can make up to 80% of what your former position currently pays, on top of the 60% of annuity the first year and 40% every year thereafter, thus potentially allowing you to actually make more in the end).

“Starting the Process” is indeed a foreboding next step — one that must be thoughtfully engaged.  However, the Federal or Postal employee does not come to such a decision lightly.  Contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and let not the prospect of the process be more onerous than the process itself.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: But OPM Does

In preparing and submitting a FERS Medical Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, you may think that certain “minor details” will be overlooked, and that your application will “fly through” without a hitch.  Maybe you are not a “detail-oriented” person, or you think that it doesn’t matter if certain “inconsistencies” are evident in your filing.  Or, maybe you just don’t care because your focus is upon getting through the day.

But OPM does.  The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is looking for every excuse to deny your Federal Disability Retirement application.

To some extent, that is their job, of course.  Every Federal Disability Retirement application which comes before the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is scrutinized, where all “boxes” for eligibility must be “checked”.  And while you — the applicant — may not think that certain administrative requirements are all that important, OPM does.

OPM will deny your Federal Disability Retirement claim in a proverbial “heartbeat”.

To increase the chances of success, contact a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer and make sure that any inherent inconsistencies in your Federal Disability Retirement application are avoided.  For, while you may not see such inconsistencies as being relevant or important, “But OPM does” is the important point, here, and moreover, your Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer will certainly be able to distinguish the difference between important inconsistencies and those which are not.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement under FERS: The Trouble Bin

But that life was merely a pleasant dream where we could pick and choose the sequence of events; would the “trouble bin” ever be accessed?  Would our scenes ever depict unhappiness, dismay, concern or of distraught loneliness?  Would we ever open the lid to the Trouble Bin and take out the problems therein?

Or, would we forever keep it closed and live blissfully within the confined pleasures of our sweetest dreams?  Would life become monotonous if there were never any troubles, such that — “just for fun” — we would sneak over to the Trouble Bin and take a peek to see what would happen if, just for a brief moment, we could pinch ourselves awake and be jarred away from the dreamworld of a perfect life?

But that troubles could be placed in a bin and the lid closed until and unless we wanted to access it; that, in and of itself, would be a dream worth having.

Life is full of troubles; the series of troubles are not always in any rational sequence, but often come in clusters where two hands and a sound mind are not quite enough to handle it all; but then, just as we have little control over our own dreams (except in those rare ones where we “know we are dreaming” and can actually dictate the content of the dream), we have less to do with troubles that life introduces on a regular basis.

Some would argue that most, if not all, troubles are of our own making:  The decisions we make; the options we choose; the pathways we go down.  Some troubles, however, that come out of the Trouble Bin are not of our own making or choosing — for example, a medical condition that becomes chronic or debilitating.

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, it may be time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

To do so, it may be wise to open the lid of another “bin” that hopefully sits next to the Trouble Bin:  of the “Advice Bin”, by contacting an attorney who specializes in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement Application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: And then…

It is the precursor to the punch line, or perhaps the conclusion of a tale told with eyes wide with anticipation; what precedes, what follows, and then….  Stories are told well, middling, or perhaps badly, but they are told nonetheless, with conclusions that come about with surprise, aplomb or perhaps with a suspended yawn stifled for mere courtesy.  Everyone has one.  It is often said that the story of a man’s life is not in its conclusion, but in the living of it up to the end, but one wonders; is it the telling of it that matters, or the living of it?

In this day and age of technological openness, where everyone’s every detail is disseminated within moments of occurring, no one actually lives anymore, but merely by virtual existence.  Life is about what others think, about the opinions of likened friends, and how many “likes” have been amassed over a life-span of one’s presence upon social media.  The “telling” of one’s life has always been a part of the human makeup; cave-dwellers from long ago we were, and the drawings that have been left by ancestors long forgotten reveal the propensity and desire to tell tales — tall or otherwise — that also ended with, “And then…”

But this is a new phenomena; of telling the tale whilst living it, and sometimes even before; of setting up the “And then…” before the “then” even occurs, and well before the “And” makes its existence known.  It is a switch of a paradigm, a conversion of the psyche and a pre-consciousness before the ego bit off the Id of the seamless ego’s altercation with itself.  And then….

We know not what the outcome of such a story is.  Untested, unresearched, under constant attack; it remains the single mystery that yet needs to be told.  For, everyone has a tale to tell; a life to live; but the telling of the tale of one’s life was once the province of old men in rocking chairs who whispered to wide-eyed boys and girls of the feats of justice and generational transfers of heroic deeds left to folklore, old wive’s tales and exaggerated syllogisms lost in the conundrum of nightmares and sleepless ogres.  No more.  And then….

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 SF 3112A — Applicant’s Statement of Disability — provides the opportunity to tell the tale of one’s woeful conditions and worrisome progression of deteriorating circumstances.  The tale needs to be told; and like all tales, it needs to be presented with coherence and with a logical sequence of validity.

The problem with such telling of the tale of one’s medical condition, however, is the same problem that today’s generation faces: Of living the medical condition and yet telling of it, all in the same breath.  Too emotional, too involved or too whatever; in the bureaucracy and administrative complexity of presenting the tale to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the telling of one’s tale should be consolidated into an objective delineation in a clinical and legal admixture of complex simplicity.

For, like jokes and narrations that keep the attention of the reader and audience, there must always be the punchline that persuades and convinces, as in — And then…

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Our place in the world

One morning, we wake up and go into the backyard or, perhaps if one is living in an apartment, simply observe some trees or a little oasis of nature — a park; a clump of bushes situated in a grove of lawns coalescing; or just a singular mulberry tree that has grappled upon a cracked corner of the concrete jungle where some soil has erupted, surviving in the middle of a desert of the city’s impervious view; and a bird sits and sings.

We don’t think about the bird:  Does it know where its place is in the world?  Did it struggle as a young bird-ling to find its place, to “fit in”, to be “unique” and thus “special”?  No — it is just us humans who engage in that sort of thinking — of the awkward youth who tries to find his or her place in the universe; of going through those difficult years finding one’s place, one’s niche, and one’s solace in the troubled waters of one’s soul.

Are those merely foolish thoughts of a young person — do we all eventually grow out of it and return to the level of cynicism and conclude that it’s all bosh, and there is no such thing as one’s “place” in this cold and impersonal universe?  It is a safe haven, is it not, to remain as one’s father and forefather’s placement offered, and not have to think about one’s place independently and separately?

To that extent, birds and others who merely survive based upon instinct and thoughtless intuitiveness possess a survival advantage over those who must search and become affirmed:  There is no need to find one’s place, for that has already been pre-determined from generations ago.  Then, in later life, what does one do when one has lost one’s identity?  If you never searched for it to begin with, will it feel as a “loss” if you lose something you never attained in your own right in the first place?

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 position, part of the fear, angst and anxiety in initiating and proceeding with the process of Federal Disability Retirement, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the loss of our place in the world.  For, that career that you worked so hard to sustain — whether in an administrative field, a technical niche or as an expert in this or that elite vocation — may have to either come to an end, or become modified to accommodate your medical conditions.

Your “place in the world” may become upended, and that is often a fear that must be confronted.  But like the hummingbird that seeks the nectar of life’s offerings, if health is not the first priority that makes it all worthwhile, then you’ve likely mistaken which priorities need to be first in line, lest you mistakenly think that your Federal Agency or the Postal Service will help you in the never-ending quest for one’s place in the world.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The gathering clouds

We don’t have people saying such pithy or inane things, anymore, and the death of the metaphor is the fault of Google.  And, of course, the Weather Channel and the Smart Phone apps that give us the updated information concerning that which we can see for ourselves.

Who ever talks that way, anymore?  “The dark clouds are gathering” – a metaphor for trouble brewing, problems arising or bad people getting together to engage in no good deeds.  To which everyone whips out their Smart Phones and checks the most updated forecast, using the Weather Channel app that everyone has already downloaded onto their phones, and in unison respond: “No it’s not; today is only partly sunny, then tomorrow there is a 20% chance of rain and the temperature is…”  “No, no, no…that is not what I meant by saying that the dark clouds are gathering.  What I mean is…” And you are met with blank stares by the horde of millennials who speak a foreign language, fail to understand the generation before the Internet or Smart Phones, and don’t even own a landline.  What, is that even possible?

Time was once upon a millennium, when farmers felt the bones ache from the gathering storm; that one could sniff the winds of changed directions; and noting the behavior of rabbits, birds and the mutterings of crows in the bushes, the gathering clouds would be discerned as patterns of nature’s calling.  Technology has its place and uses, but in the end, it dulls the instincts that have survived and helped human beings to last for want of realization of a civilization lost in the silent graveyards of forgotten memories.

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 the Federal or Postal job duties, the “gathering clouds” is often hinted by the behavior of coworkers, supervisors, and other agency officials; of the tone and tenor of attitudes abounding; and though the adverse action or initiation of a PIP may appear to come as a surprise, you knew it was coming long before, just as you knew that you needed to start the process of the filing a Federal Disability Retirement application long before the time made it into an urgency, or even an emergency.

The gather clouds, no matter how much we may try to stamp out the underlying instinct felt, is still the same the world around; we just have a better way of suppressing it than in countries less technologically sophisticated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Medical Retirement: Agencies and the Opium Den of Yore

They were dark caverns of gatherings; residual consequences of colonialism; and though denied in polite society, the lure of addictive aroma wafting ever pervasively brought men and women repeatedly to the doors which opened for the pleasurable moment of escape.  It was like going back, and staying, despite knowing the harm it did, would do, and could wrought, even with the knowledge of the harm portending.  But the residue of the sweet scent would remain, like an invisible thread tugging at the weakest corners of the soul, to return, return, return.

Life tends to do that; of drawing people back, and holding on despite knowing that it is not good for one; and perhaps that explains, in part, those who remain in abusive relationships and engage in self-harm and behavior of self-immolation.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who remain with the same agency, in the Federal sector or the U.S. Postal Service, knowing that continuation in the same job inflicts harm and continuing, contributing deterioration of one’s medical condition, the agency itself and the U.S. Postal Service becomes like the opium den or yore.  One returns, knowing that the abusive behavior of the entity will only continue to pervade with a constancy of greater aggression.

For Federal and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the need to separate from the Federal Service or the U.S. Postal Service — like the addict who requires the sheer determination and willpower to stay away from the opium den — often remains the only solution.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is a planned escape route in order to (A) rehabilitate one’s medical condition and (B) secure an annuity in order to attain a semblance of financial security, both for now and for the future.  As such, any Federal or Postal employee who finds that a medical condition is impacting one’s ability to perform the essential elements of one’s job, and who sees the sign of future adverse actions on the part of the agency or the U.S. Postal Service, needs to consider the steps necessary to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM.

One need not be an addict of foregone years wandering through the streets searching for an opium den in order to engage in self-inflicting behavior; it may just be that one is merely a Federal or Postal employee engaging in similar behavior, and not fully realizing the options available.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire