FS Form 4000 is the federal form for changing the ownership or beneficiary on paper Series EE and Series I savings bonds. You use it after a marriage, divorce, or death, or any time you need to add or remove a co-owner or beneficiary on a paper certificate you physically hold. The reissued bonds no longer come back as paper: the Treasury deposits them as electronic holdings in the new owner’s TreasuryDirect account, so whoever will hold the reissued bond needs an account open before you mail anything in.
When You Need to File It
Not every change requires reissuance. A simple address update does not. The Treasury requires the form whenever the registration itself has to change:
- A legal name change after marriage or a court order, so the bond matches your current legal identity.
- Adding or removing a co-owner or beneficiary, including removing a former spouse or naming someone new.
- Death of a co-owner or owner, so the survivor holds the bond in their own name.
- A divorce decree that awards bonds to one spouse or divides them between spouses.
The form covers only paper EE and I bonds. It does not apply to bonds already electronic in TreasuryDirect, which have their own online process. It does not cover Series E or Series HH bonds, which are governed by different regulations and different forms. And if your goal is to move bonds into a living trust, the form you want is FS Form 1851, not this one.
Information and Documents to Gather
Pull out each physical bond and record the series, the full serial number, the issue date (month and year), and the face amount printed on the certificate. Copy the complete inscription: full names, Social Security numbers, and addresses of everyone currently listed. You will also need the SSN or taxpayer identification number for whoever will appear on the reissued bond. Getting the numbers right matters beyond processing, because the Treasury uses them to track interest and issue tax documents.
What you attach depends on why you are reissuing:
- Death of a co-owner or owner: a certified copy of the death certificate.
- Divorce: a certified copy of the divorce decree, plus any separate property settlement agreement the decree references without spelling out.
- Court-appointed guardian for a minor: the court order or letters of appointment.
The PDF is on the TreasuryDirect website. Type into the digital fields rather than handwriting. Illegibility is one of the most common reasons the Bureau sends applications back.
Choosing the New Registration
The “new registration” section is where you set the legal structure of the reissued bond, and each role carries very different rights. A sole owner has full control: cash it, change the beneficiary, or let it mature. Adding a co-owner gives both people equal rights; either can cash the bond without the other’s permission, and when one dies the bond automatically belongs to the survivor. A beneficiary has no rights at all while the owner is alive, and gains access only after the owner’s death is documented. You can also name the United States Treasury itself as a co-owner or beneficiary if you want the bond to become government property on your death.
A minor can be named on a reissued bond, but the owner still needs a TreasuryDirect account. Reissued bonds initially come back in the owner’s name only; a secondary owner or beneficiary can be added inside TreasuryDirect afterward.
When Both Co-Owners Must Sign
If a bond lists two living co-owners and the change is anything more than a simple name correction, both co-owners must agree and both must sign the form. You cannot unilaterally remove a co-owner or swap in a new beneficiary without the other person’s cooperation.
There is one narrow situation that looks like an exception but isn’t. If a co-owner submits the form for a name change on their own registration, the bond gets reissued into that person’s TreasuryDirect account as a single-owner bond. Because that effectively removes the other co-owner, the Treasury still requires the other co-owner’s written consent.
Signature Certification
You cannot sign FS Form 4000 at your kitchen table and mail it in. Federal rules require your signature to be certified by an authorized officer who watches you sign and verifies your identity with government-issued ID. A standard notary public does not qualify.
Authorized certifying officers include:
- Officers of a bank, trust company, or credit union incorporated in the United States, or employees expressly authorized by such an institution to certify.
- Officers of Federal Home Loan Bank System members, including federal savings and loan associations.
- Officers of a Federal Reserve Bank.
- Certain U.S. government officials: judges, clerks or deputy clerks of U.S. courts, U.S. Attorneys, and certain IRS officials.
The certifying officer must apply a legible imprint of the institution’s corporate seal or issuing agent’s stamp to the certification section. A missing or smudged stamp, or an unclear title, will get your application returned. Most people go to their own bank or credit union, where the service is usually free for existing customers.
A notary public can certify only if you are in a foreign country and no authorized officer is available, and even then a U.S. diplomatic or consular officer has to authenticate the notary’s authority under seal.
Divorce Reissuance Has Extra Requirements
The Treasury recognizes divorce decrees that settle both spouses’ interests in savings bonds, whether through a property settlement agreement incorporated into the decree or through a direct court order. You can reissue a bond to remove one spouse or to substitute one name for another as owner, co-owner, or beneficiary.
The paperwork is heavier than for other reasons. Submit certified copies of the final divorce decree and any supplementary proceedings. If the decree is more than six months old when you send in the bonds, add a certificate from the court clerk, dated within six months and under court seal, confirming the decree is still in full force.
One situation to watch: if the bond is registered with one spouse and a third party as co-owner, such as a parent, the Treasury needs either a voluntary reissue request from that third party or a certified court order from proceedings where both the third party and the named spouse participated.
Tax Consequences of Removing a Living Owner
Reissuance is not always tax-neutral, and this is where the most expensive mistakes happen. If a living owner’s name is removed from a bond through reissuance, that person owes federal income tax on all interest the bond earned while they owned it, assuming they had not been reporting interest annually. The form itself states that “the obligation to report the interest cannot be transferred to someone else through a reissue transaction.”
The new owner is only responsible for tax on interest earned from the date they became the owner. Proving that split gets messy with paper bonds. When a reissued paper bond is eventually cashed or matures, the Treasury issues a single 1099-INT to the person who cashes it, covering the bond’s entire lifetime of interest. The new owner then has to demonstrate to the IRS that a portion of that interest belonged to the previous owner. IRS Publication 550 walks through how to make that adjustment.
Electronic bonds handle this more cleanly. The Treasury issues a 1099-INT to the previous owner at reissuance covering interest earned up to that point, and a separate 1099-INT to the new owner when the bond is later cashed or matures.
Where to Send It and How Long It Takes
Mail the signed and certified form with the physical bonds to:
Treasury Retail Securities Services
P.O. Box 9150
Minneapolis, MN 55480-9150
Use a mailing method with tracking. The Treasury recommends registered mail for securities. Until the Bureau processes and cancels the old paper bonds, they still represent real financial value that cannot be replaced if lost in transit.
Be prepared to wait. According to recent Treasury guidance, paper savings bond transactions that are not in your name can take five months or longer, and transactions for bonds in your own name can take three months or longer. These are the Bureau’s own published timeframes, not worst-case estimates. If the reissuance is tied to settling an estate or finalizing a divorce, build the delay into your planning.
When processing finishes, the original paper certificates are retired and the reissued bonds appear as electronic holdings in the designated owner’s TreasuryDirect account. The Treasury no longer issues replacement paper certificates for reissued EE or I bonds. You will receive notification once the new registration is legally active.
Forms That Are Not FS Form 4000
Using the wrong form will cost you months of processing only to have the paperwork sent back:
- For lost, stolen, or destroyed bonds, use FS Form 1048. The Treasury can replace missing bonds as electronic holdings or cash them out, but the claim starts with that form.
- For transferring paper bonds into a living trust, use FS Form 1851. The trustee needs a TreasuryDirect Trust account and authority to act alone on behalf of the trust.
- For bonds already in TreasuryDirect, handle ownership changes through the online system.