Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 2293 — DD2293, "Application for Former Spouse Payments from Retired Pay" — was established to Application for Former Spouse Payments from Retired Pay, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
That decision has consequences you will notice. Because not stated prescribes the form for the Department as a whole, and not stated maintains it on the Department's behalf, the same blank passes between the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Space Force, the Coast Guard when operating under Defense jurisdiction, the defense agencies and the combatant commands without translation. A clerk in one component reads a record created in another and finds the fields where they expect them.
The edition in force is not stated, carried by the publisher as not stated, and edition discipline is stricter on a Department form than most people expect, precisely because supersession happens everywhere at once. There is no interval during which one service still works from the previous layout while another has moved on.
The sequence printed on the form is the sequence in which a reviewer will read it, and the two should agree. Header data frames every entry below it; the substantive fields depend on that frame; the certification stands at the end because its whole function is to vouch for what came before. Entries made out of sequence commonly contradict entries made earlier.
Check the edition date before you type anything, against not stated. Old blanks accumulate in shared drives for years, and the cost of one is not obvious until a reviewer cannot find a field. Because DD forms are revised centrally and replaced across the Department in a single action, there is no component still tolerating the old layout as a local practice.
Every field takes an entry, N/A included. The reason is evidentiary rather than clerical: a completed record is supposed to show what was asked and what was answered, and blank space records neither. On dates, follow the format printed beside the field. Conventions vary between components, and a joint document is read by people who do not share your habits.
Understand what the Privacy Act Statement is doing on the page. It exists because collecting personal data from an individual triggers a duty to explain the collection: under what authority, for what purpose, to whom the information may routinely go, and whether you are obliged to answer. That explanation precedes the fields for the obvious reason — afterwards it is merely a notice, beforehand it is a basis for deciding.
The signature converts entries into an attestation, and that is why its form is prescribed. Ink, or a digital signature carrying a credential that identifies the signer — commonly issued on a Common Access Card. Typed characters in the box satisfy neither standard, because the whole value of a signature lies in being difficult to produce on someone else's behalf. Date it as you sign; an undated attestation cannot be placed in the sequence of events.
Recurring defects have a pattern to them, and it is mostly the pattern of a record that cannot be relied on: an edition that does not match, gaps that cannot be interpreted, entries that cannot be read after scanning, dates that could mean two things, and a certification nobody executed. For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 1 pages and asks for approximately 89 entries.
If you find an xfdl file here, its presence is historical. The format belongs to IBM Lotus Forms, which the Department adopted Department-wide for electronic forms and fielded on a scale that makes wholesale removal slow. You need the matching viewer to open it; ordinary pdf software cannot read the format and will say so unhelpfully.
Every format is free, as published government documents are. A note on tools, though — the interactive field layer that makes a fillable pdf useful is precisely the part browser viewers handle least reliably. Save the file, open it in a full pdf reader, and the fields behave as the form's designer intended.
What the form asks for
- ADDRESS
- ADN
- APPLICANTID
- Alimony
- ApplicantNAME
- Appsignature
- CURRENTNAME
- Cell1
- Cell2
- CurrentPage
- DesignApllication_version
- Draft
- Evidence
- FOUO
- Footer
- FormNumber_Date
- FormTitle
- Frame
- NAME
- Needs_DD67
- OMB
- PAS
- Page1
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
Cross-referenced documents are found by series and number, with nothing further required. That the DD sequence is unified across the Department means a cited number identifies one form and no other, which is the practical payoff of centralizing the numbering in the first place.
It helps to see the DA and DD sequences as what they are: separate registries with separate custodians. One serves a single service under a service proponent, the other serves the Department under not stated or an equivalent office, and neither was ever indexed against the other. A number that appears in both systems points to two unrelated documents, which is why reading the prefix comes before reading the digits.
A form is downstream of the policy that requires it, and revision usually starts there: a directive is reissued, a collection requirement is altered, notice language is updated by statute. The form is republished as a consequence. Since none of that reaches individual users, an archived copy quietly becomes wrong, and verifying not stated each time you download is the whole remedy.
The role of this page is narrow and worth stating plainly. It makes a published Defense form available and explains its structure. It does not advise, does not interpret policy for your circumstances, and cannot indicate how any office will treat a completed copy — those judgments rest with the authorities that own the process. Direct such questions to not stated, to the administrative office that services you, or to the authority named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2293?
- DD2293, "Application for Former Spouse Payments from Retired Pay"
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?