Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 2788 — DD Form 2788, Child Annuitant's School Certification, 20150226 draft — was established to Child Annuitant's School Certification, 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.
You are looking for edition not stated, listed as not stated. Department-wide supersession is a single event rather than a rollout, which is what distinguishes edition currency on a DD form from the same question on a service publication: nobody anywhere is still accepting the previous version out of habit.
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 2 pages with roughly 42 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.
Fillable and printable are not two presentations of one file but two different objects. One holds your entries as structured data within the document; the other is a static picture meant to meet a pen. Since a DD form frequently moves outside the organization that created it, the durability of the entry matters more here than on a record that stays in one drawer. Typed text reproduces indefinitely; handwriting degrades at every copy.
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
- 1. Member's social security number.
- 2. Member's name: last, first, middle initial.
- 3. Annuitant's social security number.
- 4. Annuitant's name: last, first, middle initial.
- 5. If under age of majority, name of legal representative.
- 6. Date of Birth: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.
- 7. Are you married? Press space bar to mark X in first box if yes, second if no.
- 8. Are you currently attending school full time? X first box if yes, second if no.
- 10. If high school, expected date of completion: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.
- 11.a. If other than high school, date term or semester began: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.
- 11.b. Date term or semester ends:s 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, go to item 15.
- 9.a. Name of school.
- 9.b. School address, include zip code.
- 9.c. Telephone number of school. Include area code.
- 14.a. If other than high school, date term or semester began: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.
- 14.b. Date term or semester ended: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.
- 12. If not currently attending school full time: a. name of last school attended.
- 12.c. Telephone number, include area code.
- 12.b. Address, include zip code.
- 13. If high school, date of completion: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.
- 15. Do you plan to attend school full time during the next 150 days? X first box if yes, second if no.
- 17.a. Date term or semester will begin: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.
- 17.b. Date term or semester will end: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day.
- 18. Signature of annuitant or legal representative. Remember to obtain school official's certification on Page 2.
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 2788 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.
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 2788?
- DD Form 2788, Child Annuitant's School Certification, 20150226 draft
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?