How Do I Transfer My Montgomery GI Bill to My College-Age Sons?
Q: Dear Sir, I am trying to figure out how I can transfer my Montgomery GI Bill to my sons who are college age. I retired in Aug. of 2008 and have been told I am not able to transfer at this time – is this fact? If so who is championing the fight to allow persons like me to transfer in Congress so I can write to them. Thanks for the service your providing to all Vets.
A: The Montgomery GI Bill does not have a transfer-to-dependents option to it, so you couldn’t transfer that GI Bill if you wanted to. However, the Post 9/11 GI Bill does have a transfer option where you could have transferred benefits to your sons, however, now that you are retired, you can’t.
When Congress wrote the New GI Bill, they were focused on using it as a re-enlistment tool, so you had to have served for at least six years, agree to serve another four years, and to make a transfer request, be serving “on or after August 1, 2009″, meaning once you retired, you could no longer make a transfer.
There have been a couple pieces of legislation during the past few years that would have allowed career retirees retiring between December 10, 2001 and July 31, 2009 the opportunity to make a transfer request. However, not only did neither of them pass, neither even had enough support to come to a vote.
I have started a petition that addresses this issue. If you would like to read it over and decide if you would like to support it, that would be great. This issue doesn’t seem like it is going to resolve itself, so I thought I would try this route. It would not hurt to contact your Congressional representation and let them know how unhappy you are with this issue and ask for their support.
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