Can My Children Still Use the Post 9/11 GI Bill Benefits I Transferred to Them Two Years Ago?
Q: I enlisted in the military in 1989 and paid the $1,200 for the Montgomery GI Bill. I separated in 1995 and used a portion of my GI Bill. I was commissioned in 1997 and am still serving on active duty. I plan to return to school and use the remainder of my Montgomery GI Bill. Here is the question: I transferred my Post 911 GI Bill benefits to my children two years ago. Will they still be able to use the 12 months of Post-911 benefits even though I still had the Montgomery GI Bill at the time of transfer? And will the initial transfer date still be valid since I technically didn’t have the post-911 at the time of request. Very confusing!
A: It can be very confusing, but I’ll do my best to explain it. First, if you were eligible for the Post 9/11 GI Bill when you made a transfer request, you gave up what benefits you had left under the Montgomery GI Bill, if that was the only other GI Bill you had besides the Post 9/11 GI Bill. So you do not have any benefits left under that GI Bill that you can use to go back to school.
Second, you would have been only able to transfer the number months you had left under the Montgomery GI Bill and not any additional Post 9/11 GI Bill months. The only way to get the additional 12 months is to first exhaust all of your old GI Bill months of benefits. So I’m not sure how many months you tried to transfer.
Third, did you ever go back in to the TEB website and see if your transfer request was approved? The Status Block would show “Transfer Approved”. If you were not Post 9/11 GI Bill eligible at the time you made the request, your children probably do not have approved benefits they can use.
Go back in and check. If your transfer requests were not approved, re-submit and follow-up this time. When (or if) approved, then each child has to submit VA Form 22-1990e from the eBenefits website to get their Certificate of Eligibility that each one of them will need when enrolling in school. If they have already done that and they got their COE, then they should be good-to-go.
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