The reason DA Form 5425 looks the way it does is that a file has to speak for itself. Officially APPLICANT/NOMINEE PERSONAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT, it serves to applicant/nominee personal financial statement, and the record it produces outlasts the people and the circumstances behind it. Edition 05/01/2023, status ACTIVE, is the version published here: 3 page(s), close to 200 fields, each one present because some later reader will need that fact without being able to ask for it. Because a subsequent edition has appeared, this copy stays available — a record made under one edition is interpreted under that edition.
Behind any Army form sit two separate decisions. What the document asks is settled by G-1, which maintains and revises it. Whether you raise it, and where it goes once signed, is settled by AR 601-1. That division is the reason a form can outlive several changes in the process it serves.
Retrieval governs the order of entry. The head of the form takes name, identification number, unit and date, and those values become the handles by which the record is found later — the substantive blocks are never searched on. This is why the spelling must match official records exactly rather than approximately.
Much of the form's behaviour follows from its being a fixed page. Tab order was set at build time along the reading sequence, which is why tabbing catches boxes a pointer passes over. Exclusive groups release one choice when another is made because a record cannot carry two answers to a single question. Single-line fields refuse to wrap because every entry must print where the layout expects it — text beyond the width is lost at the margin, visible on screen to the end. That is what remarks areas and continuation sheets are for. Marking a field that does not apply matters for a related reason: emptiness is ambiguous, and a reviewer reading the file later cannot distinguish an omission from a decision.
The signature is the point at which entries become an assertion someone stands behind, so it follows everything else and its absence leaves a draft. Countersignatures by reviewing, approving or witnessing officials each carry their own weight and are dated at signing, which is how the file preserves the order of responsibility. Seen that way, the familiar errors are not clerical trivia: an unanswered mandatory field, digits transposed in an identification number, day and month reversed, and residue from a reused file each put something false or unresolved into a document that will be relied upon.
Personal information may not be gathered silently, and the Privacy Act statement is how that obligation is met on paper: it names the collection authority, the purpose, the routine uses and whether disclosure is mandatory. Because it exists to inform a decision, it belongs before the fields it covers rather than after them. A filled copy then holds personal data and is stored and transmitted under the corresponding safeguards.
Download the form
Why several files for one page? Because the form has to be completed in a headquarters and in places without a workstation, and PDF, XFDL covers both. The fillable pdf holds interactive fields that fix each entry in place and remove handwriting from the equation. The printable pdf is the same layout without those fields, meant for a printer and a pen. Neither is a lesser copy of the other; each answers a condition the other cannot.
Software determines whether an entry lasts. A browser viewer is designed for reading, and several will take typed input into fields without any means of writing it back — the text is simply absent when you reopen. A standalone reader handles the form structure properly. The xfdl file is IBM Lotus Forms, carried in Army systems for the routing and signature support it provides, which is why the Lotus Forms Viewer is its only reader.
There is no charge and no sign-up. Published documents are distributed as published, without modification.
What the form asks for
- ADDITION
- ALIMAM
- ALL
- ALLN
- ALLY
- AMA
- AMB
- AMC
- AMD
- AME
- AMF
- AMG
- AMH
- AMI
- AMJ
- AMK
- AML
- AMM
- ANY
- ASSAM
- ASSN
- ASSY
- BALA
- BALB
Disposition is prescribed, not chosen. AR 601-1 names the destination, whether that is a specific office, the unit administrative channel or the personal record, and the applicable records schedule governs how long it survives there. Both rules exist to keep the file consistent across offices with different habits. Take your copy before the document leaves, since it will not come back.
Related documents are located by series and number, and the relation is rarely accidental — forms under one proponent or one directive tend to serve steps of a single procedure. Anything the DA series form names on its face normally travels with it, as do the continuations, covers and transmittals the process generates. Assembling them together is what makes the submission a complete account.
Revision follows the process, which is why editions appear without a fixed interval, and the printed date rather than any version number identifies them. Nothing on a stored copy signals that it has aged; the check is manual. Work already completed under a superseded edition stands as filed, because the record was made under those terms and is properly interpreted under them.
It is worth being plain about what this page is within all of the above. The files are reproductions of published Department of the Army documents, offered for download by a site with no official standing and no part in issuing anything. That matters because the machinery described here — proponency, prescribing directives, records schedules — runs entirely elsewhere. Nothing written here is legal advice, and no statement can be made about whether an office will accept a given document. G-1 and the administrative office servicing your unit answer questions of entry, requirement and eligibility, and they are the ones positioned to.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 5425?
- APPLICANT/NOMINEE PERSONAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT
- Which edition is current?
- 05/01/2023
- Who is responsible for this form?
- G-1
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF
Publisher notes
- PRIVACY ACT STATEMENT