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Dear Service Member or Veteran,
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has identified a potential risk to your transfer of GI Bill benefits. When choosing how to divide entitlement to your family, the form used in milConnect allows for a start and end date to be entered. Setting defined start and end dates for your family members can possibly cause a hardship for using entitlement in the future if you are not available to make the necessary changes in your account. If you become incapacitated or experience an untimely death, your family will not be able to change those dates and may not be able to use their entitlement. VA and the Department of Defense recommends removing these dates from your transfer of entitlement.
If you wish to correct this, log into the milConnect site, remove the dates on the transfer. milConnect can only be accessed by you, the Veteran or service member. Current law does not allow VA, beneficiaries, or a Veteran Service Organization to make this change on your behalf. Making this change will eliminate the possibility that your beneficiaries lose their entitlement.
After you remove your start and end dates, you or your beneficiaries will also need to contact VA to update your records. Changes to your transfer of entitlement are not automatically carried over to VA systems at this time. You can make this request through the Ask VA portal or call the Education Call Center at 888-442-4551 between 7AM – 6PM CST, Monday – Friday.
We appreciate your immediate attention to this matter and hope that this precautionary measure eliminates the possibility that your family loses out on any benefits that you transferred to them. If you would like more information on the transfer of your Post 9/11 BI Bill benefits, explore the VA transfer of entitlement website.
Respectfully,
Education Service
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