licenses & feesstate

The Recorder Files Your Discharge Free — and Certified Copies Are Free When a Claim Needs Them

The county recorder must record a veteran’s discharge without charge, and must record medals, citations, commissions and any other document needed to perfect a claim on the same terms. Where a certified copy is required to perfect a veteran’s or a dependant’s claim, the custodian must furnish it without charge. The file is confidential for sixty-two years.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

What it's worth: Recording free; certified copies free where a claim requires them

The saving is small per document and repeated over a lifetime of claims, appeals and survivor filings. It is worth recording because the alternative — ordering from the National Archives — costs weeks rather than dollars.
The free certified copy is conditional. Subsection 7 attaches it to a copy REQUIRED to perfect the claim of a veteran in service or honorably discharged, or of a dependant. A copy wanted for convenience is not inside it.

Who is entitled to it

You served.
You are in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

1Take the discharge to the recorder in a county you are connected to. The definition is generous: enlisted or inducted from the county, resided in it at any time, or buried in it.
2The free list is wider than the DD214. Commissions and warrants, orders citing a veteran for bravery, citations and bestowals of medals from state, federal or foreign governments, and any other document needed to perfect a claim all record without charge.
3If there was never an official discharge — killed in action or died in service — the recorder must instead record an official certificate, order, letter or telegram from a competent authority showing the service ended, including letters from the Defense Department or the VA.
4A veterans organisation may present a deceased veteran’s records on the veteran’s behalf, and the recorder must record those free too.
5Ask for the certified copy in the same visit if a claim needs it. Subsection 7 makes it free from the custodian of the record.
6The file is confidential and stays that way for sixty-two years from the event. Before then it goes only to you, an immediate family member, a written agent, a licensed funeral director with custody of the body, on court order, or to a government department — and the department of veterans affairs is expressly entitled to it.
7A recorder who publishes notice of these services pays for the notice out of the recorder’s own office budget, so there is no cost to you in finding out about it.

Form: Present the discharge at the county recorder’s office
File with: County recorder
Documents you will need: dd214
No renewal: Once granted it does not need renewing.

CorrectionThe usual summary is "Iowa counties record a DD214 for free". Subsection 7 is the part that gets missed and is worth more: where a CERTIFIED copy is required to perfect the claim of a veteran or a dependant, the custodian must furnish it without charge. That is a standing fee waiver on the document a claim actually needs, not just on the filing.

Worth knowingThe alphabetical INDEX of names is a public record and must be disclosed to any member of the public, while the discharge itself is not. The index tells a searcher that a record exists; it does not open it.

Worth knowingThe sixty-two-year rule cuts both ways — after sixty-two years anyone may examine or copy the record, though the recorder must redact any social security number first. Genealogists rely on that; families sometimes do not expect it.

Sources

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.