DD Form 2656-10 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 2656-10, SBP/RC SBP Request for Deemed Election, April 2009, and it exists to Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) / Reserve Component (RC) SBP Request for Deemed Election. 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.
This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.
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 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.
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.
Where a specific field is genuinely unclear, the instructions printed on the form come first and not stated governs where the two do not agree.
Download the form
The set published here is PDF, covering 2 pages with roughly 56 fields. More than one format survives because the Department serves users under very different conditions, from a desk with current software to a location where a printer is the only reliable output.
Two states of the same page circulate, and the reason is worth knowing. In the fillable pdf, the boxes are real fields holding real data; in the printable pdf, the boxes are drawings. Where a record will cross components — as Department records regularly do — the typed version is the safer artifact. Each scan, each forwarding, each reproduction costs handwriting a little legibility, and the office that finally files the record is rarely the office that received it first.
Xfdl appears in the set for reasons of institutional inertia rather than preference. It is the IBM Lotus Forms format, once the Department's electronic forms standard and deployed widely enough that it outlived the decision to move on. IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or an equivalent client opens it; a pdf application will not.
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
- 3.a. Branch of service.
- b. Press space bar to mark X in first box if active duty, second box if reserve, or third box if National Guard.
- 4. Is member retired? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- 5. If yes, date of retirement (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no dividers).
- Section 2 - Former spouse information. 6. Former spouse name (last, first, middle initial).
- 7. Social Security number.
- 8. Address (include zip code).
- 9. Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 10. Marriage history. a. Date married to member (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- b. Date of divorce (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- c. Are you currently married? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- d. If yes, date of current marriage (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Section 1 - Member information. 1. Member name (last, first, middle initial).
- 2. Social Security number. Do not include dashes.
- 11. Is election made pursuant to requirements of court order? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- 12. Is election being made pursuant to written agreement previously entered into voluntarily as part of or incident to a proceeding of divorce, dissolution or annulment? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- 13. If "yes" to question 12, was such voluntary written agreement incorporated in, ratified, or approved by a court order? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- Section 4 - Dependent Children information. 14.a. Name (last, first, middle initial), line 1 of 7.
- b. Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- c. Social security number.
- d. Relationship (son, daughter, stepson, etc.).
- e. Disabled? (Yes or no.)
- a. Name, line 2.
- b. Date of birth.
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.
Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.
Where a service form is cited in the same instruction, the two numbering systems should not be read across. DA numbering belongs to the Army and is administered by an Army proponent; DD numbering belongs to the Department and is administered by not stated or an equivalent Department office. The systems developed separately and were never harmonized, so identical digits in each identify two documents with nothing in common. The prefix, not the number, tells you which system you are in.
Editions change for reasons that originate above the form itself. The prescribing directive is reissued and the form follows; the information the Department needs to collect changes and the fields change with it; the statutory notice language is amended and every form carrying that notice is republished. None of these events announces itself to the person who downloaded a copy last year, which is why confirming not stated at the moment of download is the only reliable check available to you.
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 2656-10?
- DD Form 2656-10, SBP/RC SBP Request for Deemed Election, April 2009
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?