When a member of the U.S. military dies in active duty, the U.S. government wants to help family members he or she left behind. One way it does that is to give family members who aren’t U.S. citizens the opportunity to apply for U.S. citizenship more quickly. If you had a U.S. citizen spouse, parent, or child die during a period of honorable service in an active duty status in the U.S. armed forces, read on for some important rules relating to your application for U.S. citizenship.
Spouses, children, and parents of a U.S. citizen military serviceperson who died during a period of honorable service in an active duty status can apply for U.S. citizenship without having the usual five years of continuous residence and two and half years of physical presence in the United States as green card holders.
If they are already permanent residents living in the United States at the time of the serviceperson’s death, they can apply for citizenship right away. Others can apply for U.S. citizenship as soon as they become permanent residents.
If your spouse, parent, or child was not a U.S. citizen at the time of his or her death, you don’t qualify for early filing. However, if you (or the next of kin) successfully applies to have your spouse, parent, or child given U.S. citizenship after death as a thank-you for his or her service during hostilities, you become eligible for early filing.
All the other requirements for your citizenship apply, except that unlike other applicants, you do not need to live in a particular state or USCIS service district for three months before applying, and you do not need to live in the United States from the time of applying to the time of the oath ceremony.
These exceptions extend to permanent residents who have permission to live overseas. Such persons do have to come back to the United States for the citizenship interview and oath ceremony, however.
To take advantage of early filing, a surviving spouse must have been living “in marital union” with his or her spouse at the time of the spouse’s death. That just means that you and your spouse were actually together. You weren’t living in marital union if you were legally separated from your spouse when he or she died or if you were living separately under circumstances that suggest the marriage was never going to be repaired. If you were living apart because of your spouse’s military service, rather than because of voluntary legal or informal separation, that’s okay.
You can take advantage of early filing even if you remarried after your former spouse’s death.
