OPM Disability Retirement: Which Forms, How to Fill Them Out, and What to Put

Filling out forms is a part of life.  At some stage in our lives, we are required to complete forms.  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 positional duties as a Federal employee (which encompasses the full spectrum of positions, from secretaries, administrative assistants, to scientists, Information Technology Specialists, 1811 Law Enforcement Officers, etc.) or a U.S. Postal worker (including Craft employees, Managers, Postmasters, Supervisors, etc.), preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application may become a necessity.

Thus, the act of “form filling” must be confronted.  On computers, of course, if you have been completing online queries, the “autofill” option may be presented.  But the limitation of such an option, and the unavailability of that choice, should become readily apparent when attempting to complete the various “Standard Forms” required of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

For any remaining CSRS employees intending to file for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, the series embodied under the designation of SF 2801 must be completed, along with the SF 3112 series.  For all of the rest of the Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who came into Federal or Postal Service after around 1985, and who are under FERS, the SF 3107 series must be completed, and as well, the SF 3112 series of standard forms.

Thus has the question, “Which Forms?” been answered.  As for the remaining two questions:  How to fill them out and What to put —  the “how” is, to put it mildly, with care and trepidation; the “what to put” is too complex to elucidate in this forum.  The series of “informational” forms — SF 2801 series for CSRS employees and SF 3107 for FERS employees — are fairly straightforward (e.g., full name, date of birth, Social Security number, agency name and location, military service, etc.).

It all comes back to the SF 3112 series which becomes problematic — for that is where the Federal and Postal employee must “prove” the nexus between one’s positional duties and the medical conditions by which one is prevented from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties.  For that, the Federal and Postal employee must go “outside” of the boundaries of the forms themselves, and consult documentation obtained from the doctor, and make legal arguments based upon wise counsel and advice.

As with much of life, it is never as easy as a bureaucracy promises; indeed, the complexity of life is in the very bureaucratization of administrative forums.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement under: Duplicative Duplicity

We can lie to others; others can deceive us; one can persuade oneself of a falsehood in order to live a deception; and we may even be able to persuade others, despite knowing the truth, to tell a lie and come to believe it in order to create an atmosphere of believability for third parties to concede.  The capacity for human nature to construct walls of deception, and double-walls of duplicity, is fathomless and without competition.

Everywhere else in the animal kingdom, the stark reality of the innate essence for survival prompts and compels in order to meet the day’s needs and arrive at the horizon’s end so as to lay one’s head upon a pillow of restive sleep; but not for man.  It is not just that we can ignore and set aside; we can repress and play-act, and convince others of the finery of the emperor’s clothes.

We can engage in sympathetic acts of criminal endeavors, join the Symbionese Liberation Army and claim the Stockholm Syndrome as a defense against our prosecutors, and live life within the parameters of the lie told and the deception accepted.  But then, one day, an obstacle is encountered.  Reality tends to slap one in the face, flush where the pain will not go away.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition necessitates contemplating 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 revelation of duplicative duplicity normally arrives when the pain and purview of one’s medical condition exponentially exceeds the spectrum of tolerance for continuation beyond overwhelming turmoil.

When life becomes unbearable, we tend to act.

Only in the antiseptic universe outside of the general laws of Darwinian behavior can we survive beyond our own making of deceptive parallel universes.  But our bodies tell of truths; our instinct, the need to act; and despite expanding our natural arc of flight by duplicative duplicities, the flickering depths of our animal essence can never truly be extinguished.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Life’s Fathomless Diatribe

We tend to personify and project upon lifeless, inorganic and inert entities, not to mention the extrapolation of generalized and universal conceptual forms, and inject them with personalities, characteristics and living imprints.  Did Plato make this fatal mistake, or was he beyond our intellectual capacity, and perhaps like the mischievous character he provided in his dialogues, was he merely the siamese twin of Socrates and inextricably conjoined in body, mind and philosophical spirit, with that glint of the knowing jokester?

“Life”, as we like to make of the stuff which confounds us, is like the half-crazed homeless person who stands on the street corner and yells at us as we pass by.  Sometimes, we even get hit by a bombardment of spittle, and an unexpected whack on the head, leaving us stunned and helpless, faint with outrage and anxious that Mr. Life may follow us home.  And, indeed, he sometimes does.

Life is like that fathomless diatribe; and we are merely an audience of one, isolated, watchful, spectators who can only observe, sometimes shout back, and in a feeble attempt at altering destiny, weep in a heap of self-pity and trembling repose.  That is how the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker feels, in confronting the mammoth of the Federal Bureaucracy and the U.S. Postal Service, especially when the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker are enmeshed in the weakened state of fighting a 3-front battle:  One’s own Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service; a medical condition that has begun to impact the ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional requirements; and the battle against “life” and all of its multitudinous facets of complexities.

Is “life” just another metaphorical voice in the darkness of time?  For the Federal or Postal worker, the time to file 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, must often be determined by the harkening voice of life’s trials and travails.  As OPM is just another behemoth to confront, in addition to one’s own agency or the U.S. Postal Service, so the preparation to “do battle” must include the tools of engagement:  the facts, the law, and the will to proceed.  And like life’s fathomless diatribe, the will to win must first and foremost be the amour of protection in preparing, formulating and filing for OPM Disability Retirement.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Stuff of Life

Aristotle refers to the underlying unchangeableness of the world we encounter, in contrast to the cosmetic alterations which appear to defy the constancy of the universe, thereby bringing together the two poles of philosophical opposition as represented by Heraclitus and Parmenides.   That “substratum” which underlies it all, and of which Heidegger sought to unravel and make known; for the everyday person, it is the “stuff of life” that we must deal with.

Things happen (which is a more genteel way of putting it, as opposed to the colorful vernacular by which it is often known), and the aggregation of all of the compendium of cumulative such bundles — of bad childhoods, decisions we make, corners we turn, the stresses which bombard, marriage, children, the inconstancy of life’s trials and travails, and medical conditions which impede and debilitate  — some are mere appearances which dissipate as time endures, while others constitute the substratum, or the Forms of Platonic Philosophy, and must be accepted as the essence of our very Being.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must endure the hardship of surviving through a medical condition, where the medical condition itself begins to impact the ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal duties, that “stuff” must add one more component:  the reaction of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, in attempting to accommodate the medical condition which prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing the essential elements of one’s positional duties.  Stuff happens, and the stuff of life must be dealt with.

For Federal and Postal workers, the question of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is one which must begin with the core of human need and daily suffering.

Do we wait until all appearances fade away, and we are left with nothing but the exposure of what remains?  Do we “fight on” until the essence of who we are is lost forever?  That is often the conflict which must be resolved, and to which the Federal or Postal employee must resign him or herself to — of whether the Federal or Postal job is merely another one of the “stuff of life“, or have you made it into the Staff of Life?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire