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Use DA Form 4991 when you need to declination of continued service statement. Full title: DECLINATION OF CONTINUED SERVICE STATEMENT. Everything you need is on this page — the file, the entry rules, the routing. Edition 04/01/2023, status ACTIVE, 1 page(s), roughly 147 fields. Note the supersession: a later edition exists, and this one applies only to records already completed on it.
G-1 is the proponent, AR 601-280 the prescribing authority. Read the directive only if something about your situation departs from the standard case. Otherwise the form is filled by the individual it describes, or by the records clerk keeping the file, and reviewed through the printed signature blocks.
PDF, XFDL are available and the decision takes one second. Type your entries: fillable pdf. Write them: printable pdf. The published layout is common to both, so the format governs your method and nothing more.
Use a full pdf reader, not the browser viewer. Browser viewers display fields they cannot always save, and the loss shows up only when you reopen the file — type one entry, save, reopen, verify, then fill the rest. The xfdl file is IBM Lotus Forms, used inside Army systems, and opens in the Lotus Forms Viewer alone — no pdf reader, no word processor.
Free, unregistered, unmodified. What arrives is what the publisher released.
What the form asks for
- ContentArea1
- DATE1
- DATE2
- DATE3
- DATE4
- DODI
- ETS
- INI1
- INI10
- INI2
- INI3
- INI4
- INI6
- INI7
- INI8
- INI9
- Initial1
- Initial10
- Initial2
- Initial3
- Initial4
- Initial6
- Initial7
- Initial8
The heading entries carry more weight than the body. Name spelled as in official records, identification number, organisation, date prepared. Retrieval runs on those values, so a transposed digit or a casual spelling costs someone a file search. Fill them before anything else.
Tabbing beats clicking for coverage. The order was set at build time and tracks the page layout, so following it leaves no gaps. Boxes and buttons are clicked; where options are exclusive, one selection cancels another by design. Watch field width on long entries: one-line fields have no wrap, and what runs past the edge disappears in print though the screen still shows it. Move that text to remarks or a continuation. Never leave an inapplicable field empty — enter the nil mark, because a reviewer cannot distinguish a skipped question from a considered answer.
Signature comes after every other entry — ink or an approved electronic means, and without it the document is a draft. Where reviewing, approving or witnessing signatures are called for, take them in printed block order, each dated on the day applied. Before release, one pass from the top. The defects worth hunting are always the same four: mandatory fields left empty, identification digits transposed, dates with day and month reversed, and stale data surviving in a copy reused in place of a blank form.
The Privacy Act statement is read before the personal entries, not after. It gives the collection authority, the purpose, the routine uses and whether disclosure is mandatory or voluntary. Once filled, your copy is a personal record and gets stored and transmitted accordingly.
Send it where the directive says: the office it names, the unit administrative channel, or the individual's file. Take your copy before submission. How long the record is held comes from the schedule for the series, not from the office holding it.
Companion documents come from the same series and number scheme. Within the DA series, a shared proponent or a shared directive usually means shared use, and a form cited on the face of another accompanies it. Gather the whole package first — continuation sheets, cover sheets, transmittals.
A stored file goes stale silently. The proponent revises, a new edition date is published, and your copy says nothing about it — so compare the printed date against the edition in force before typing into it again. Completed submissions on an earlier edition are not reopened.
What is distributed here are reproductions of published Department of the Army documents. Independent site, no official standing, no forms of its own. Nothing on the page constitutes legal advice, and acceptance by any office is outside what can be stated. Put questions about entries, requirements or eligibility to G-1 or your servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 4991?
- DECLINATION OF CONTINUED SERVICE STATEMENT
- Which edition is current?
- 04/01/2023
- Who is responsible for this form?
- G-1
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF
Publisher notes
- , PRIVACY ACT