DD Form 2656-7 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 2656-7, Verification for Survivor Annuity, April 2009, and it exists to Verification for Survivor Annuity. 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.
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.
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a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.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 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.
Before the first entry, compare the date printed on the form face with not stated. This is not bureaucratic fussiness. Editions change field numbering, and a receiving office working from the current layout may look for information where your copy does not put it. On a Department form the exposure is wider than usual: your record may be reviewed by an office in another service entirely, one with no reason to remember what the previous edition looked like.
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 50 fields.
All of it downloads without charge. Where care is needed is in the reader you choose. A fillable pdf depends on field properties that desktop applications honour and browser previews frequently ignore, so work locally rather than inside a browser window.
What the form asks for
- 1.c. Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no separators).
- 1.d. Date of death (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 1.e. Branch of service.
- 1.f. Rank/rate.
- 2. Claimant verification. a. Claimant's name (last, first, middle initial).
- 2.b. Claimant's social security number.
- 2.c. Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 2.d. Telephone (include area code).
- 2.e. Citizen of (country).
- 2.f. If you are a nonresident alien, press space bar to mark X in this box and see note.
- 2.g. Type of benefit claimed. Mark X in first box if SBP, second box if RCSBP or third box if RSFPP.
- 2.h. Relationship to decedent. X first box if spouse, second box if child, third box if former spouse, or fourth box if insurable interest.
- 2.i. Correspondence address (street, apartment number, city, state, and zip code).
- 3. This section applies to spouse applicants only. .a. I certify that I was legally married to the member on the date of death: X first box if yes, second box if no.
- 3.a.(1) If yes, please verify date of marriage to member. If blank or incorrect, please provide correct marriage date.
- 3.a.(2) If No, please provide the date of divorce (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 3.b. Are there children under age 23 or incapacitated of the deceased member? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- 3.b.(1) If yes: name of first child (last, first, middle initial).
- 3.b.(2) Social security number.
- 3.b.(3) Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 3.b.(1) Name of second child.
- 3.b.(2) Social security number.
- 3.b.(3) Date of birth.
- 3.b.(1) Name of third child.
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.
When DD Form 2656-7 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.
Procedures that touch both Department and service processes will cite forms from both sequences, and the coincidence of numbers between them is exactly that — coincidence. An Army proponent maintains the DA series for the Army; not stated or another Department office maintains the DD series for the whole Department. Two independent registries, two independent numbering runs, no correspondence at any value.
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.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2656-7?
- DD Form 2656-7, Verification for Survivor Annuity, 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?