Home/Veterans/Separation Timeline

Separation Timeline

Most of what you decide on the way out
has a date on it

Put in the day you take off the uniform and this lays out what is dated ahead of it — the VA claim windows, the deadline that protects your effective date, when your health coverage stops, what happens to your leave and your TSP, and where final pay goes wrong.

Every line cites the regulation or the agency it comes from. No email needed to see it.

Your Separation
Your DD-214 date — the last day you are on active duty. A best estimate is fine; every date below moves with it.
Two questions that change the answer
This is the single biggest fork. Several transition benefits are written for involuntary separations and retirements only, and a lot of general advice never says so.
Leave both of those alone if you would rather not answer. The dates still work — anything that depends on your separation type is marked Depends instead of guessed at.
Your dated decisions
Put in a separation date on the left and your timeline appears here.

Where each date comes from

Every line in the tool traces to the regulation or the agency that owns it. This is the whole point of the thing, so the sources are on the page rather than buried.

The VA claim windows. The Benefits Delivery at Discharge program takes a pre-discharge claim filed between 180 and 90 days before you leave, if you are on full-time active duty, have a known separation date, and can attend VA exams within 45 days of filing. Fewer than 90 days left and you file a standard pre-discharge claim instead. VA, Pre-discharge claim

The deadline that actually protects your money. Your effective date is the day following separation for any claim received within one year of separation. File later than that and it runs from the date the claim is received instead. Filing inside the 180-to-90 day window buys you a decision closer to your separation date; it is not what earns the back-dated effective date. 38 CFR 3.400(b)(2)(i)

Health coverage. TRICARE ends at 11:59 p.m. on your last duty day. You have 90 days from your separation date, or from your TAMP end date, to change plans. The Transitional Assistance Management Program adds 180 days of premium-free cover, but it is limited to involuntary separations under honorable conditions and a short list of other categories — a routine end-of-enlistment separation by choice is not one of them. After that, Continued Health Care Benefit Program cover is purchased, not free. TRICARE, Separating From Active Duty and TAMP

Leave. You can sell back up to 60 days of leave across an entire career. Enlisted members can sell at re-enlistment or at separation; officers only at separation, under honorable conditions. Terminal leave is ordinary leave except you do not report back afterwards. Permissive TDY for job and house hunting is for members being involuntarily separated under honorable conditions or retiring — members separating at ETS or EAOS are not eligible. Military Compensation, Leave Benefits During Transition

Your TSP. If your vested balance is under $200 when your service reports you have left, TSP pays it out automatically 60 days after it is notified or 60 days after your separation date, whichever comes first, with 20% withheld. Under $5 is forfeited outright. Partial distributions start at $1,000; an annuity purchase starts at $3,500, counted separately for traditional and Roth. A uniformed-services account can be rolled into a civilian TSP account, but a tax-exempt combat-zone balance cannot move with it. TSP, Distributions booklet

Final pay. If your pay account is flagged with a debt, DFAS says you could wait 120 days or more for your final paycheck while the account is audited. DFAS, Final Pay

This page states deadlines. It does not tell you what to elect, what to file, or what to do with your TSP — those depend on your own numbers, and none of them are on this page. Sirmium Capital LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser and does not provide tax or legal advice.