You need DD Form 2790, and this page gives you the blank plus the steps for handling it. Start with what the form does: Custodianship Certificate to Support Claim on Behalf of Minor Children of Deceased Members of the Armed Forces. Its official title is DD Form 2790, Custodianship Certificate to Support Claim on Behalf of Minor Children of Deceased Members of the Armed Forces, 20150302 draft.
Next, check the edition. You want not stated, currently carried as not stated by the publisher. Then confirm the form applies to you — this is a Department of Defense form, so you use it whether you serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force or Coast Guard under Defense jurisdiction.
Once you know the form fits, find out when you file it. not stated sets the requirement, and not stated maintains the form itself. Your own command or agency adds local timing on top of that, so ask your administrative office if the deadline matters to you.
Last in this stage, choose your method: complete it on screen, or print the blank form and fill it out in pen. The sections below take each route step by step.
Start at the header. Complete your identification before anything else, then work through the main entries, then finish at the certification. Skipping around causes contradictions between the top of the form and the bottom.
Your first action is verification. Find the edition date on the form and match it against not stated. A mismatch means you are working from a superseded printing, and because DD forms change Department-wide rather than service by service, the office receiving it will notice.
Look up an unclear item on the form face before anywhere else, then in not stated. Should the two texts conflict, the directive is the one you follow.
Download the form
Begin by choosing a file. Available here: PDF. Plan for 2 pages and about 37 entries.
Handle xfdl in two steps. First confirm you have IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or a compatible reader on your machine; ordinary pdf software will report the file as broken. Once the viewer is running, download and fill the form.
Whichever you pick, you pay nothing — every format here is a free download. One last tip: open your pdf in a desktop reader rather than in a browser tab, because browser viewers sometimes drop the interactive fields you need.
What the form asks for
- 1. Member's name: Last, First, Middle.
- 2. Member's social security number. Do not include dashes.
- 3. Child or children in custody. a. Full name: last, first, middle, line 1of 6.
- 3.b. Child's social security number, line 1.
- 3.c. Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no separators), line 1.
- 3.d. Relationship to member, line 1.
- 3.a. Child's name, line 2.
- 3.b. Social security number, line 2.
- 3.c. Date of birth, line 2.
- 3.d. Relationship to member, line 2.
- 3.a. Child's name, line 3.
- 3.b. Social security number, line 3.
- 3.c. Date of birth, line 3.
- 3.a. Child's name, line 4.
- 3.b. Social security number, line 4.
- 3.c. Date of birth, line 4.
- 3.d. Relationship to member, line 3.
- 3.a. Child's name, line 5.
- 3.b. Social security number, line 5.
- 3.c. Date of birth, line 5.
- 3.d. Relationship to member, line 5.
- 3.a. Child's name, line 6.
- 3.b. Social Security number, line 6.
- 3.c. Date of birth, line 6.
Now that it is complete, send it where not stated or your local procedure says it goes. Before you do, make yourself a copy — scan it or save the file elsewhere. It costs you nothing and saves you the whole exercise if the original goes missing.
Should you need a related form, look it up by its number. The DD sequence is Department-wide, which makes your search simple: no service qualifier, no branch-specific variant to track down.
Here is where people go wrong. They see a number in an instruction and download whichever form matches it. But DA and DD are separate systems — Army-specific in one case, Department-wide under not stated in the other — so check which series you were sent to before you take the file.
Come back and check the edition next time you need this form. Editions change when the prescribing directive is reissued, when the information collected changes, or when the required notice language is updated, and none of those events reaches you directly. Verifying not stated at the moment you download is the whole defence.
One thing this page does not do: tell you whether your submission will be accepted. We publish the document and explain how to complete it, and that is where our role ends. Nothing here is legal advice. Take questions about eligibility, applicability or procedure to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2790?
- DD Form 2790, Custodianship Certificate to Support Claim on Behalf of Minor Children of Deceased Members of the Armed Forces, 20150302 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?