Delaware Department of Veterans Affairs and Veterans Service Officers

If you are dealing with any Delaware veteran agency, it helps to know the structure changed in 2025 and that most documents have not caught up. What happened. House Substitute 1 for House Bill 1, with House Amendment 1, which is 85 Delaware Laws chapter 137, created a Department of Veterans Affairs headed by a Secretary in Title 29, chapter 88. The act was approved on August 13, 2025, and the Office of Veterans Services says the Senate confirmed Brigadier General (Retired) Karen Berry as the first Secretary on September 22, 2025. Why it is still inside the Department of State. Section 8801, subsection (c) keeps the new Department "a division of the Department of State" for administrative, budgetary and operational purposes until the General Assembly approves, by concurrent resolution, a transition report. Subsection (d) tells the Secretary to plan separation "by July 1, 2030, or such time as there will be no negative impacts to the funding for veterans-related programs in Delaware" and to present the report six months ahead. So the Department is cabinet level in name and leadership and still a division in budget and staff. The website is still vets.delaware.gov and still headed Office of Veterans Services. What stays. The Delaware Commission of Veterans Affairs continues under sections 8811 to 8816 with fifteen Governor-appointed commissioners who must be veterans, ten representing named veterans organizations. It keeps general oversight of the Delaware Veterans Home under section 8812, subsection (b) and advises the Secretary on everything else. The Commission's Executive Director is now a Department employee who must be a veteran. What the Department does for you. Section 8804 gives it the veterans memorial cemeteries, the Delaware Veterans Trust Fund, the state repository of discharge papers, and coordination of every state agency's veteran programs. Subsection (c) says it augments rather than replaces the service officers of veterans organizations and may accredit claims representatives in each county. Its service officers help with VA claims at no charge. Section 8803, paragraph (2) directs the Secretary to hire veterans to fill Department positions "where possible". The discharge paper repository. County recorders of deeds used to record DD-214s. Title 9, section 9605, subsection (j) now forbids that and requires every recorded discharge document to be transferred to the Department, which must maintain them. Title 29, section 10002 makes those documents confidential for 70 years from separation, open only to the veteran, a spouse or child with the veteran's consent, a survivor who may claim a benefit, someone with a notarized authorization, and officers helping with a benefit claim. If you recorded a DD-214 in a Delaware county, the Department now holds it. The VA fiduciary of last resort. Title 12, section 3981 makes the Office of the Public Guardian "the VA fiduciary of last resort for U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs benefits", in the same way it is the representative payee of last resort for Social Security. For a veteran VA has found unable to manage benefits and who has no suitable family member, that is where the appointment goes. What has not caught up. Title 21, section 2718 still tells the Division of Motor Vehicles to coordinate with "the Delaware Office of Veterans Services". The veterans cemetery statute still refers to the "Veterans Commission of Delaware". Expect both names on forms for some years.