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Recording Your Discharge With the County — No Fee

A discharge, release or transfer certificate may be recorded with any Minnesota county recorder by the person it was issued to without paying any fee. Access to what is recorded is then restricted by statute.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

A discharge, release or transfer certificate may be recorded with any Minnesota county recorder by the person it was issued to without paying any fee. Access to what is recorded is then restricted by statute.

What it's worth: The recording fee, waived — and a same-county copy of your DD214 for the rest of your life

  • The statute waives the recording fee; it does not publish the fee it is waiving, and county recording fees are set elsewhere, so we do not quote an amount.
  • The larger value is not the waived fee at all. It is that every future benefit application in Minnesota can be served from the county rather than from a federal records request that takes weeks.

Who is entitled to it

  • You are the person the discharge was issued to.
  • Your home is in Minnesota.

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

  1. 1Take the original discharge, release or transfer certificate to a county recorder. The statute says any county in the state, so it does not have to be the one you live in.
  2. 2Say that you are the person to whom the document was issued. The fee waiver in subdivision 1(a) is written around that person, not around anyone holding the paper.
  3. 3Do it now rather than later. The point of recording is to have a local source when you need proof of service quickly — which is usually at the least convenient moment.
  4. 4Ask what a certified copy costs before you leave. The statute waives the recording fee and is silent on copy fees, so do not assume copies are free.
  5. 5Expect the recorder to restrict who can see it. Release of information about a recorded discharge is governed by Minn. Stat. §196.08, so a family member may need standing to obtain one later.
File with
The county recorder in any Minnesota county
Documents you will need
dd214
No renewal
Once granted it does not need renewing.
CorrectionFree recording is not free copies. Subdivision 1(a) waives the fee for putting the discharge on the record. Nothing in the section says a certified copy afterwards is free, so ask the recorder rather than assuming.
Worth knowingRecording a discharge makes it easier for you and harder for everyone else: subdivision 1(b) routes release of the information through Minn. Stat. §196.08, which is the protection against a discharge document sitting in a fully public index.
Known gapThe statute does not set the fee for a certified copy, and copy fees vary by county. Minnesota has 87 counties and none are researched in this corpus, so treat the copy cost as a local question.

Sources

Why only one source type: The statute is the whole of the benefit: it names who may record without a fee and points to §196.08 for release of the information afterwards. There is no administering agency page above the county level to corroborate, because the administering body is each county recorder.

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