problems with owcp and fers alternative

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The changing straw

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

The “straw that broke the camel’s back” is a known idiom that essentially reveals to us the last in the series of incidents or actions that cumulatively result in the destruction of the whole.  What in the series preceding the last straw; of what weight and import; to what significance may be attributable, we rarely focus upon; it is the last one in the series that we focus our attention upon, precisely because we assume that it is the causal connection to the event that conclusively occurs with a finality of actions. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Fishes, Streams, Rivers and Ponds

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney2 Comments

They are, in the end, interconnected; yet the conceptual distinctions allow for separateness, such that we can value each independently. And much of the waterways which filter throughout the ecosystem remain invisible and underground, via caverns and unconfined aquifers; but that which we see with the naked eye, we assume to be the reality of the entirety of that which we hold to encompass the universe of our existence. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement Law: How Does One Know the Age?

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

It cannot be by counting wrinkles, or the number of gray hairs; for, some people never develop them, and in any event, new methodologies of plastic surgery, hair dyes and other cosmetic creativities can easily override such superficial eruptions of telltale signs. Photographs can no longer be evidence of aging, for airbrushing and digital modifications can dispense with such irritating characteristics. […] Read More …

The Self-Image of a Postal or Federal Employee after a Disabling Injury or Other Medical Condition

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney5 Comments

Thurber’s Walter Mitty is not an anomaly; each of us carries a fiction within our insular souls, of lives extended into a world of fantasy, trespassing between daydreams and thoughts of heroic deeds beyond the mundane routines of daily living.  Perhaps there are those in the world whose lives are so adventure-filled that such retinues of alternative parallelism […] Read More …

The Federal Employee’s Confused Sense of Identity

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney1 Comment

It is through ascription from third parties, over extended time periods, where the development of self-identity takes root, through subtle, incremental ways, until one day, unnoticed, without fanfare and unheralded, it becomes a known quantity of acceptance within one’s social circles, professional associations and the greater macrocosmic world we encounter.  The day or the time can never be pinpointed;  […] Read More …

The Law of Salvage and Federal Disability Retirement Compensation

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

The concept is derived from maritime law, where recovery of ship or cargo at sea left to abandonment and forfeiture should be duly compensated of a value commensurate with the worth of the property salvaged. The ocean is a perilous expanse, fraught with dangers encompassing weather, treacherous beneath-the-surface terrain, and potential piracy; and it is within this context of the magnitude of dangers to be faced, that the equitable principles of maritime law are applied. And isn’t that what one must do in most phases and contexts of life? […] Read More …

OPM Disability Benefits: The Afterthought

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

It is perhaps best that anticipatory planning, based upon predictive analytics, is an afterthought for human intuition and predilection of priorities in life. Otherwise, one can remain in a world of obsessive preventative maintenance of efforts, and never accomplish what needs to be done today. Future forebodings aside, and whether an individual engages in hazardous duties which exponentially increase the statistical curve for the onset of an occupational disease or injury, or the development of a medical condition through repetitive and overuse of a particular appendage […] Read More …