You need DD Form 2891, and this page gives you the blank plus the steps for handling it. Start with what the form does: Authorization for Retired Serviceman's Family Protection Plan (RSFPP) and/or Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) Costs Deduction. Its official title is DD Form 2891, Authorization for RSFPP and/or SBP Costs Deduction, October 2005.
Your second step is the edition, not stated, listed as not stated. Your third is scope. Because the number carries a DD prefix, you use the same blank as every other military department and defense agency; no service-specific version exists for you to hunt down.
After that, turn to timing. The requirement comes from not stated; the form is maintained by not stated. Local implementing instructions fill in the dates, so check with the office that will receive your copy.
Finally, decide how you will complete it. You can type into a fillable file or print a blank and write by hand, and the rest of this page walks you through both paths in order.
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.
Before your first entry, look at the corner of the page and compare the printed date with not stated. If they do not match, stop and download again. Old copies circulate in shared drives for years, and a DD form is revised centrally for every service at once, so a superseded blank may not carry the fields your reviewer expects.
Take the fields in order and answer all of them. Mark inapplicable items N/A instead of leaving white space. When you reach a date, copy the format shown on the form, since a reviewer reading a different convention may misread your entry entirely.
Stop at the Privacy Act Statement and read it through. You will find the authority for the collection, the principal purpose, the routine uses, and whether disclosure is voluntary or mandatory. Read it now, while you still have the choice of what to disclose.
Finish with the certification. Print the form and sign in ink, or apply a digital signature with your CAC if the receiving office accepts one. Do not type your name in the signature box and consider it done; that is a name, not a signature. Date the block immediately after signing.
Then check your work against the usual failures: an obsolete edition, empty required boxes, handwriting nobody can read after scanning, wrong date format, missing signature or date.
For questions about a specific entry, check the form's own instructions, and if that does not settle it, open not stated. The directive controls where they differ.
Download the form
First, look at what you can download. The set covers PDF, the form runs 1 pages, and you will complete roughly 16 fields.
Choose pdf as your default. Next, click inside a box. A fillable pdf responds by outlining the field and letting you type; the text stays in the document when you save it. A printable pdf does not respond, which tells you to print the page and complete it by hand.
Type when you can. Printed entries stay legible after the form is scanned, copied and forwarded, and handwriting often does not survive that trip. If you must write by hand, use block capitals and press firmly.
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.
All of it downloads free. When you are ready to work, do this: save the file locally, then open it in a full pdf application. Browsers often ignore field properties, and you can lose everything you typed.
What the form asks for
- Section 1 - To be completed by member. 1. I hereby authorized the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to deduct: Press space bar to mark X if deducting from Survivor Benefit Plan costs..
- Amount to be deducted from Survivor Benefit Plan costs.
- Mark X if deducting from Retired Serviceman's Family Protection Plan (RSFPP) costs.
- Amount to be deducted from Retired Serviceman's Family Protection Plan costs.
- Beginning on the first day of: enter month.
- Year deductions begin.
- 1.a. Member Signature.
- 1.b. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Section 2 - To be completed by the VA. 1. Member's name (last, first, middle).
- 2. Social security number. Do not include dashes.
- 3. VA claim number.
- 4. VA office name and address.
- 5. SBP monthly deduction.
- 6. RSFPP monthly deduction.
- 7. Submission date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Press this Reset button to clear the data from all fields.
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.
Be careful when a procedure pairs this form with a service form. Read the prefix, not just the digits. Service forms answer to a service proponent, while DD forms answer to not stated or an equivalent Department office, and the two sequences were never aligned. Grabbing the wrong prefix gets you a form that has nothing to do with your task.
Plan to repeat this step whenever the form comes up again. Revisions follow directive changes, changes in what data is collected, and updates to notice language. Since nobody notifies you, check not stated at download and you have covered it.
Before you go, note what is not covered here. You have the blank form and instructions for completing it; you do not have legal guidance, and no statement on this page determines what any office will do with your submission. Direct those questions to not stated, to the personnel office that serves you, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2891?
- DD Form 2891, Authorization for RSFPP and/or SBP Costs Deduction, October 2005
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?