DD Form 2539 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 2539, Voluntary Leave Transfer Program Leave Recipient Application, May 1989, and it exists to Voluntary Leave Transfer Program Leave Recipient Application. What the DD prefix records is an administrative judgment made long before your copy was printed: this transaction was determined to be common to the whole Department rather than peculiar to one service, and so the documentation of it was standardized at Department level.
The practical effect of Department-level issue is interoperability. not stated establishes the requirement across the Defense enterprise; not stated keeps the document current for all of it. No service maintains its own variant, which means a completed record travels between components — service to agency, agency to joint command — and arrives in a format the receiving office already knows how to read.
Current edition: not stated, status not stated. Understand why that date is worth attention here. When the Department reissues a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.
The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
Verify the printed edition against not stated first. Field structure shifts between editions, and the office that receives your record is reading the current one. That office may sit outside your service, which removes even the informal accommodation you might expect from a colleague who used the old version last month.
For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
The set published here is PDF, covering 1 pages with roughly 23 fields.
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
- 1. Pay block number.
- 2. Employee identification. a. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- 2. b. Social security number. Include dashes.
- 2. c. Position title.
- 2. d. Grade/step.
- 2. e. Organization.
- 2. f. Salary.
- 3. Leave data. a. As of (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 3. b. Annual leave balance.
- 3. c. Sick leave balance.
- 3. d. Date available leave expires (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 3. e. Accrual rate for annual leave.
- 4. Medical emergency. a. Description (attach appropriate documentation).
- 4. b. Expected duration.
- 4. c. Approximate frequency, if recurring.
- 5. Contact during period of emergency. a. Employee telephone number, if available (include area code).
- 5. b. Other point of contact, if applicable. b. (1) Name (last, first, middle initial).
- 5. b. (2) Telephone number (include area code).
- 5. b. (3) Address (street, city, state and zip code).
- 6. b. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 7. b. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 6.a. Employee signature.
- 7.a. Supervisor signature.
Route the executed form as not stated or local guidance directs, and retain a duplicate first. Cross-component routing is ordinary for DD forms, which is precisely why a personal copy earns its keep: the receiving office may belong to an organization you have no standing to query about a missing document.
When DD Form 2539 cites another form, the citation is self-sufficient. The DD series is a single sequence administered at Department level, so the number resolves to exactly one document without any need to establish which component issued it — a convenience that exists only because the sequence was never allowed to fork.
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.
What you have here is the document and a description of it, which is a different thing from guidance. This page is not an organ of the Department, gives no legal or procedural advice, and makes no representation about the outcome of any filing; the offices that administer the requirement are the only ones positioned to answer that. Applicability, eligibility and procedural questions belong to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2539?
- DD Form 2539, Voluntary Leave Transfer Program Leave Recipient Application, May 1989
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?