Download the form
The scope here is Department-wide. DD Form 565 — DD Form 565, Statement of Recognition of Deceased, August 2015 — exists to Statement of Recognition of Deceased, and it applies across the services rather than inside one. That is what the DD prefix encodes: joint issue, single edition, every branch and defense agency working from identical paper.
Authority: not stated prescribes it, not stated maintains it. Those two names settle most disputes about why the form is being asked for. Local commands add timing on top; the requirement itself comes from above them.
Edition not stated, status not stated. That comparison is the first thing worth making, because a DD form supersedes centrally and an old copy in a shared drive is out of date for every office, not just yours.
The set is PDF. Size: 1 pages, about 28 fields. Everything below refines that choice.
Default to fillable pdf, print only when you must. The fillable file stores what you type; the printable file is a blank picture. A Department form often travels further than a service form — scanned, emailed, forwarded to an agency that never saw the original — and typed text is what survives that.
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.
Start by matching the printed date to not stated. Old blanks accumulate in shared folders for years. Because the Department reissues to all services in one action, nobody is still accepting the previous layout by local custom.
Field-level questions go to the printed instructions, then to not stated, which is authoritative.
Send it as not stated or local guidance specifies. Save a copy. Cross-service and cross-agency routing is normal for Department forms, and a lost original outside your own organization is harder to chase down.
Related forms are found by number alone. The DD sequence is one unified Department-wide series, so a cited number resolves to exactly one document with no branch qualifier needed.
Where a procedure cites both a service form and a DD form, the two are unconnected. Service numbering answers to a service proponent, DD numbering to not stated or another Department office, and the two sequences were never aligned. Matching numbers mean nothing whatever.
Three drivers of revision: directive reissue, altered collection requirements, updated statutory notice text. No notification accompanies any of them, so download fresh and confirm not stated rather than reusing an archived file.
Limits of this page: it distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes it. No legal advice, no procedural ruling, no statement about whether any submission will be accepted. Applicability, eligibility and procedure belong to not stated, to a servicing personnel office, or to the office named 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?