Federal Worker Disability Retirement: Considering The Future

When considering the future, we look at the present and rely upon the past.  It takes an imaginative mind to see the future beyond our present circumstances.

That is often why a Federal or Postal employee who needs to file for OPM Disability Retirement benefits under FERS looks bleakly at the future: Suffering from a medical condition; Knowing that, presently, you cannot do your job; Assessing that your income will be reduced; Realizing that you are not the same person you were before the medical condition — these factors will be looked at in a negative way.

Yet, the future with a FERS Disability Retirement annuity allows for so much: Of focusing upon getting back your health; of being allowed to work in another job and making up to 80% of what your former Federal or Postal position currently pays; and while you may not be the same person as before, you have the opportunity to become a better you, adjusting to the health challenges before you, but without the stresses of trying to be as before.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law, and consider seriously the future, bright and promising.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: The Details of Life

We speak generally, but live by details; think in terms of grand plans and hypothetical dreams, but become bogged down in the minutiae of daily concerns; care about grand schemes and philosophical methodologies but are forced to take out the garbage in the morning.

It is the details of life that determine our behavior, necessitate our reactions and force our hands.  In coming to a contractual agreement, there are general principles which can be negotiated, but whether the signature is inked into the final agreement depends upon the “devil in the details”.  Most of us like to spout grand beliefs and ethical precepts, but how many of us would stick to the details of such beliefs when arrest and torture is threatened?

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, Federal Disability Retirement might be a consideration that must be entertained.  The Law works only within the context of details; it is the details of a case which must be reviewed and advanced.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and do not allow the details of life to get in the way, but rather, make sure that the details are focused upon in order to prove by a preponderance of the evidence your rightful eligibility to Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employment Medical Retirement Benefits: Answering

There are a wide-ranging set of rules when answering — whether to a question, a query or the need to rebut a determination of some sort.  Etiquette often plays a large part in social situations; or of common conventions and unspoken rules of interpersonal interactions.  Different situations call for tailored responses, and often we confuse one sphere of responsive need with another. “Do I owe an explanation” often depends upon the circumstances — the status between the query and the deposed; the relationship fostered; whether there would be consequences in failing to provide an answer, etc.  Then, of course, there is the issue of timeliness.

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, much of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is a matter of answering questions — questions posed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on Standard Forms 3107 and 3112.  How one answers the questions; what answers are formulated; when to file a response; where to file the response — they are all relevant in preparing an effective FERS Disability Retirement application.

Consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) Laws and set the path of “answering” not only in the right way, but in an effective manner in preparing, formulating and filing a successful Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: The “rush” job

There is a difference, of course, between a “rush” job and a “sloppy” one; and while the two can be one and the same, there are circumstances where the former is necessary but does not necessarily have to result in the latter.

Procrastination is often the harbinger of sloppiness, and having to “rush” at the last minute is normally a natural and inevitable consequence of it.  Most events, issues and problems arising in life are never real emergencies; we make of them so because we allow them to fester and grow, like those molds left in petri dishes once reserved for science experiments that become fodder for science fiction novellas.

Medical conditions have a way of adding to complexities and delaying circumstances otherwise traveling on a normal course of events; things just tend to “pile up” like dishes first left in the sink, then another few, until suddenly one realizes that the stack that began with a single unwashed plate is now a tottering semblance of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and another emergency to attend to.

Suddenly, everything needs to be done yesterday; and what was once something that needed to be done sometime in the obscure future, demands attention today, yesterday and the day before that.  What one does not know, or is not aware of, of course, is often ignored, and deliciously cast aside — for ignorance is bliss and not recognizing what is slowly evolving in the dark corners of the unreachable abyss, though harmful, is better left unknown.  Or so we think.  Wrongly, as it turns out.

Like medical conditions left undiagnosed, we go through life happily ignorant; or like actions of a Federal Agency while the Federal or Postal employee is taking too much time off to go to medical appointments or trying to get better — is it better not to know what supervisors and managers are discussing behind one’s back?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have waited and waited, hoping that one’s medical condition will get better, will somewhat improve, or otherwise disappear altogether, and who have now exhausted all SL, AL and the patience of the Agency or Postal Facility in taking LWOP, perhaps a PIP is in sight, or the “end” is nigh and an adversarial action is “in the works”; or, perhaps none of that is but a faraway matter to be concerned with.

Whatever the circumstances, life brings about emergencies, and maybe even triggers a “rush” job; but always remember that the end-focus is to prepare, formulate and file an effective and persuasive Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, and the “rush” job that is suddenly an emergency needs to be tempered by excellence, lest sloppiness hinders the efficacy of rushing that which is important for one’s future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The clinical language

The antiseptic nature of language allows for the euphemism of linguistic cloaking to occur.  The corollary effect, however, is that it fails to provide a nexus to the humanity lost, and allows for an arrogance of language by imparting its distance and separation from warmth.

Clinical language has that characteristic, steeped in the mysterious and archaic history of Gregorian chants at altars once embodying the Eucharist’s theological secrets of transubstantiation with the priesthood undulating in phrases foreign to ears of modernity; and from that same pocket of incomprehensible linguistic sophistication that only New Englanders like Buckley and other intellectuals would bandy about with phrases we all nod at as if we understood them, comes the cold, clinical language that doctors, nurses and psychiatrists use in diagnosing conditions beyond the mere commoner’s ability to realize.

The clinical language bifurcates and objectifies; it is a way of keeping the discussion on a level of discourse where human emotions need not enter, will not intercede, and cannot invade through the impenetrable walls of the rational side of the brain.  Perhaps there is a need for that; a want, a desire and a worthiness to maintain that distance, so that the topics delineated, explained and obfuscated can be accomplished without the emotional turmoil of those consequences resulting from the realization that one is damaged goods beyond repair.

In the end, however, when the patient goes back home, discusses it with family, friends and close relations, the interpretive process must by necessity be utilized.

In former times, dictionaries were taken out, root words were defined and the Latin phrases whispered in secret murmurings of incantations incomprehensible were untangled, discerned and disassembled.  In modernity, we Google them and have the algorithm of computer intelligence in sunny California interpret the words for us to digest.  Then, the translation into the emotive language of kitchen-held talks in hushed tones where children strain to listen from stairwells around the corner; and tears wept, confidences given and lost, and the upheavals of families in crisis where the clinical language has been demythologized and demystified so that even the everyday person can recognize the human toil of a ravaged body and mind.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, whether that medical condition has been diagnosed in clothing termed by the clinical language used by the medical profession, or already interpreted in common everyday usage, the plan is to prepare an effective, understandable, cogent and coherent Federal Disability Retirement application, and one that can bridge that gap from phrases barely comprehensible to linguistic descriptions that present a viable case.

Doctor’s reports and office notes, clinical narratives and treatment records are all useful and necessary, but in order to create that legal nexus of presenting a persuasive argument and meeting the standard of proof of preponderance of the evidence in a Federal Disability Retirement application, it is always a good idea to interpret and translate that clinical language into a delineation that touches upon the everyday emotions common to us all, by breaking down the bifurcated walls and allowing for the warmth of humanity to pervade the narrative of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Substantive vacuity

Another oxymoron, of sorts.  There are many of them in life, and the longer we live, the greater recognition we purport to identify.  People often say things and don’t mean it; or, such declarative niceties are meaninglessly bandied about because there is never any intention of follow-up or fulfilling of statements made.  We all know of people like that – commitments made with words, but no actions to follow; promises allegedly posited, with failed remembrances later on; or, misunderstandings on your part, and never theirs.

When did words become so meaningless?  Was it when the national debt soared beyond the proportional number of lawyers graduated from unknown law schools and the pendulum began to swing towards that abyss of linguistic elasticity upon the President’s quibbling with the meaning of a verb in a scandal and cover-up leading to impeachment?

Or, did the pinnacle of time when substance was king become a bottomless pit of mindless vacuity when Smartphones were introduced into the fray of conversation-stoppers, where once we had to rack our neurological cells to remember whether it was Hank Aaron or Barry Bonds who beat out Babe Ruth’s home run lead, and in what year, and whether being on steroids made it count or not – now, replaced by Google or some app that only two generations hence can figure out how to download and use?

Once upon a time, substance meant the essence of a person – whether by moral fortitude, steadfastness in faith or belief, or by quiet feats accomplished but never spoken about in polite company; and vacuity was relegated to braggarts and unfaithful husbands, when emptiness of societal discourse combined to free a man to declare that the Beatles were greater than Beethoven, and somehow it was imaginable that the words of Dylan could win a Nobel Prize, despite such accolades being the frenzied rebuttal of a generation who could fathom a purist’s discontent.

Uneducated boors possessed substantive vacuity; and so does the Federal Agency and the U.S. Postal Service that fails to try and accommodate the Federal or Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition results in the necessity to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

This is, indeed, a strange, strange world, and when a Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker comes to a point of needing to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the concept of substantive vacuity comes to the fore because, after all, we are dealing with a bureaucratic nightmare in the form of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – a behemoth among juggernauts, wrapped in the conundrum of a puzzled but substantive vacuity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire