You have arrived looking for DD Form 565. Before you download, confirm this is the right document: Statement of Recognition of Deceased. Full title: DD Form 565, Statement of Recognition of Deceased, August 2015.
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.
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.
Before you download, pick your approach — editable file or printed page. What follows covers the formats first, then the entries, then what you do afterward.
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 A mismatch means you are working from a superseded printing, and because DD forms change Department-wide rather than service by service, the office receiving it will notice.
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 28 fields.
You will not be charged for any of these; the whole set is free. Before you start entering data, save the file to your computer and open it there. Fields behave far more reliably in a desktop reader than in a browser preview.
What the form asks for
- 1. Believed to be (BTB) identified decedent. a. Name (last, first, middle initial, or unidentified).
- e. Organization.
- f. Service.
- 3. Details of viewing. a. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- b. Time.
- c. Place.
- 4. Person making visual identification. a. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- c. Social security or DoD ID number.
- d. Organization.
- f. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- g. Relationship to deceased (CDR, ISG, Friend, Relative, Mortuary Affairs Personnel, etc.).
- h. Length of time you knew deceased (months or years) (N/A if Mortuary Affairs Personnel).
- 5. Witness. a. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- d. Organization.
- f. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- c. Social security or DoD ID number.
- d. Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- g. Received from.
- b. Grade.
- h. Evacuation number.
- i. RFID number.
- j. CBRNE statement: X first box if yes, second if no.
- 2. Recognition of remains is based on the following:
- b. Grade.
With the form finished, route it to the office named in not stated or in your organization's own instruction. Keep a copy first. People rarely regret having one and frequently regret not having one.
If the form points you to another document, you can find it by number alone. DD numbering runs across the whole Department, so you do not need to work out which service issued it — one number, one form, everywhere.
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.
Do not archive this file and reuse it in a year. Forms are reissued as directives are revised, as data requirements shift, and as statutory notice text is amended. Your protection is simple: download fresh each time and confirm the edition date.
Finally, understand the limits of what you have read. This page distributes a published Department of Defense form and describes how to fill it out. It does not give legal or procedural advice, and it cannot promise any outcome for your particular case. For that, contact not stated, your administrative office, or the authority identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 565?
- DD Form 565, Statement of Recognition of Deceased, August 2015
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?