Gold Star Family

The facts

Gold Star Family Plates can be issued, without charge, to spouses, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, and grandchildren of members of the United States Armed Forces who died while on active duty with the United States Armed Forces or whose death occurred due to injury sustained, illness, or disease contracted, not due to gross negligence or misconduct of the member, during active service. Each qualifying applicant can register one private passenger motor vehicle owned and principally used by that person or one motor vehicle that is owned by a partnership, trust, or corporation if the motor vehicle otherwise meets the criteria of a private passenger vehicle, there is no distinctive promotional or advertisement marking visible on the motor vehicle, and the motor vehicle is principally used by that person. Step-parents, step-children, step-siblings, step-grandparents, and step-grandchildren are not eligible unless a legal adoption occurred prior to the time of death. An Application for Gold Star Family Plates must be completed. The customer must also present one of the following… • A casualty report • A telegram for military members who served in WWII and/or the Korean War • An overseas death certificate issued by the military indicating name and date of death 70 Killed in Action (KIA) Decals A KIA decal can be issued for the plate if the deceased was killed in action. This will be indicated on the casualty report. Gold Star Family Vanity Plates Gold Star Family Vanity Plates are also available. These have the same qualifications as standard vanity plates and begin with a prefix of “GS”.

Use the listed prefix and manual examples as evidence. The broad specialty fallback is not proof that every suffix arrangement is issued.

Prefix history

A series can change its printed prefix over the years. Only the current one is issued on new requests.

Reading the format

In a pattern, L is one letter and N is one digit. The printed prefix GS is fixed — the pattern above is only the part you pick. Format rules describe what plate numbers in this series look like — they are not a claim that any particular plate number is unregistered or available.