Picture this: you’ve spent decades lugging 40-pound satchels up hills and stairs as a postal worker, destroying your lumbar spine and knees as you faithfully serve your customers, knowing in the back of your mind that should anything happen to you, FERS disability retirement will have your back. You’ve also survived the trial under fire that is the hostile postmasters, jumbled-up medical narratives, and even a wait that has lasted many months in order for the Office of Personnel Management or OPM to finalize your file and start issuing your monthly annuity checks.

Due to the fact that your injuries are considered permanent, disallowing you from carrying out work as a letter carrier, the law provides you with the option to take on sedentary work, start an at-home business, as well as work hours that are flexible in order to supplement your reduced income. You play by the rules and make sure that your pay stubs do not cross the legal earnings ceiling.

However, one day, an administrative letter or an email arrives inside the Services Online Portal, and it is an official notice from OPM. It states that by matching IRS records with the current basic pay rate of your former position, the discrepancies determine that you have been “restored to earning capacity”. And then, without being offered an upfront administrative hearing, OPM goes ahead and terminates your monthly disability checks, getting rid of your federal health insurance and even going as far as asking that you pay back thousands already spent on daily living expenses. In such cases, you need the keen and experienced eyes of a law firm that has handled hundreds of such claims and won every time on behalf of the injured postal worker – read on to find out more.

Are you looking for the best FERS disability attorney to protect your monthly annuity? Please call the experienced federal employee attorneys at McCready Law NOW at (314) 481-63338 to learn more about how we can help you defeat OPM earnings cancellations and preserve your hard-earned benefits. The experienced injured federal worker attorneys at McCready Law bring to the table combined experience spanning over 90 years, during which we have helped postal workers across the country navigate the Office of Personnel Management and federal bureaucracy with speed, efficiency, and reliability.

To date, we have recovered over $500 million for our clients, and our deep understanding of federal retirement statutes and OPM adjudication standards places us at a level that is unmatched in federal disability law. We have nationwide reach, handling cases on an agreed-upon, flat-fee basis, and your first consultation is 100% FREE.

Regardless of where you live in the United States, McCready Law can assist with your FERS disability case from start to finish, stepping between you and OPM to protect your monthly checks and defeat wrongful terminations so you can maintain your financial security. Need to speak to someone regarding an OPM Disability Earnings Survey inquiry or a threatened benefit cancellation? Call us NOW at (314) 481-63338 to learn more about our legal services – our intake coordinator is standing by to route your call to one of our experienced attorneys

Overcoming OPM’s 80 Percent Earnings Cap Trap – What You Must Know

Under 5 C.F.R. § 844.402, a FERS disability annuitant under the age of 60 is legally allowed to become self-employed in order to make up for wages lost as long as this amount doesn’t get to the 80 percent mark of your current basic pay for your former postal position. If OPM attempts to cancel your benefits on account of automated data matching, there are some strategies we can apply in order to have them reverse their decisions

Here are some of these strategies:

1. Separating Passive Capital from Active Earned Wages – OPM algorithms take raw figures from IRS Schedule C or 1099 forms, and then they assign these as being passive rental property income, or capital gains and even investment dividends as active earned wages. However, under federal regulations, passive investments are not considered and counted toward your earned income limit. By working with our law firm, we can help separate these passive proceeds so OPM can carry out the correct calculations with regard to only verifiable wages.
2. Adding the Mandatory 6% Percent Capital Investment Deduction: Under 5 C.F.R. § 831.1209(h), self-employed disability annuitants can reduce their net business profits by up to 6 percent of the fair market value of their capital investment in the business. Unsurprisingly, OPM calculations completely ignore this deduction. We work with you, therefore, to take out this percent from your total earnings, which can help keep them below the 80 percent ceiling.

Best FERS Disability Benefits Lawyers for USPS Workers – Call Us Today!

These are just two of the many strategies we employ to prevent OPM from clawing back your benefits via the use of flawed algorithms or automated data sweeps. If this happened to you and you are looking to reinstate your FERS disability retirement benefits, please give us a call NOW at (314) 481-63338 regardless of where you are in the country, and we will get started on reversing these procedural headaches on your behalf. Remember, the call is 100% FREE, and there is no legal obligation. Thanks for choosing us, and we look forward to helping you.