Go Online to Obtain the Military Status of Members of the Armed Forces

By: M.G. Hines Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Being a member of the armed forces gives certain privileges to the individual which are entirely justified in the context of the hardships that the members of the military face every day, especially when they are posted far from home in combat zones. The whole nation should stand behind the men and women who put in their dedicated service in the military to promote the ideals of their nation.

There are several laws that exist to protect the interests of the members of the armed forces in our country. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is one such legislation that serves to protect the military personnel from civil lawsuits when they are in active service protecting the interests of their country. This Act has existed for years and replaced the Soldiers and Sailors Act. It primarily deals with protection of servicemembers against judgments, evictions, high interest rates, and collections actions while someone is on active duty.

Creditors, landlords, law firms, lenders, storage companies, plaintiffs in law suits, collections companies, repossession companies that seek to take action against an individual will need to determine if the individual is a member of the armed forces or on active military duty under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. There are seven government agencies to consider: Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Air Force, National Health Service, and National Oceanic Atmospheric Agency (“NOAA”).

Since this Act is applicable to personnel who are in active military duty, one of the first tasks that you should complete is to ascertain the status of the person against whom you are planning to proceed. This is the start point of your research and all the information that you obtain will have to be modeled on the applicability of this condition in the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

In fact, in most jurisdictions, you would have to supply a Servicemembers Affidavit or Military Affidavit to any court when requesting action from the court, such as writs, garnishments, or attachments. In that affidavit you would swear that you made a diligent effort to conduct a military search to ensure that the person is not on active military duty. You could certainly write a separate letter to each of the seven government agencies and ask for military verification. You would need to supply as much information as you have about the individual, including the person’s social security number and/or date of birth. If you have neither of these two pieces of information, your request will probably be rejected and you may not receive your military status report. Each agency is entitled to charge $5.20 for its search (the seven searches, total, will cost you $36.40).

But, writing to all seven agencies is tedious and requires you to keep track of responses. It is also slow. Some agencies take as long as five months to respond.

There are alternate sources of information to obtain a military status report of a member of the armed forces that are available online. These services are provided by verification providers who are able to conduct searches quickly and efficiently. Often the fee is the same as what you would have paid if you had written to all seven agencies yourself ($36.40). And results come in a day or two.

Some on-line services require you to provide a social security number for the individual. If you supply a date of birth, you would receive a disclaimer that says that the search results are not guaranteed. That makes the search less trustworthy. Courts may not even accept that kind of a search.

An advantage of using a centralized verification service is that it is set up to conduct a final verification even if you do not have the social security number.

It is important that the verification provider be equipped to tell you if the person has recently left active military duty! If a person leaves active duty, he still has protections for up to one year thereafter. Therefore, knowing if the person is or is not on active duty is not enough. Instead, if the person has recently been discharged, you need to know the active duty termination date. If the verification service is not set up to give you that information, you should look elsewhere.