How to File a 2255 Motion: Form AO 243, Step by Step

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

How do you file a § 2255 motion?

Complete Form AO 243, stating the facts supporting each ground, and file the original plus two copies with the clerk of the district court that sentenced you. There is no filing fee. Sign it under penalty of perjury and, if you are incarcerated, note the date you deposited it in the institution’s legal mail system.

Key takeaways on filing Form AO 243

• Rule 2(b) requires five things: specify all grounds available, state the facts supporting each ground, state the relief requested, be printed, typewritten, or legibly handwritten, and be signed under penalty of perjury.
• Rule 3(a) requires an original and two copies. Rule 3(b) makes the clerk docket it in your criminal case and serve the U.S. Attorney.
• There is no filing fee. The Advisory Committee Note to Rule 3 says so expressly, because a § 2255 motion is a continuation of the criminal case.
• Rule 3(d) makes the deposit date the filing date if you are confined — but you must use the institution’s legal-mail system where one exists, and prove the date with a § 1746 declaration or notarized statement stating first-class postage was prepaid.
• The two defects that sink pro se motions are pleading conclusions instead of facts, and leaving a claim out of the first motion.
• Amend before judgment, not after. A new claim added later relates back only if it shares a common core of operative facts with a timely claim.

How do I file a 2255 motion? The nine steps, in order

Every step below is drawn from the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings or the official form’s own instructions. Nothing here is local practice.

1. Confirm you are filing in the right court. The motion goes to the United States District Court that entered the judgment and imposed the sentence — not the district where you are confined. Instruction 2 on the form says it plainly: “You must file the form in the United States district court that entered the judgment that you are challenging.”
2. Get the current form. Form AO 243, “Motion to Vacate, Set Aside, or Correct a Sentence By a Person in Federal Custody,” current revision 01/15. Rule 2(c) provides that the motion “must substantially follow either the form appended to these rules or a form prescribed by a local district-court rule,” and that “[t]he clerk must make forms available to moving parties without charge.”
3. Compute your deadline first. The one-year period in 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f) runs from the latest of four dates. Question 18 on the form requires you to explain why the limitation does not bar the motion if the judgment became final more than a year ago. Work the date before you write anything else — the § 2255 deadline calculator walks the four triggers.
4. Identify every ground you have. Rule 2(b)(1) requires the motion to “specify all the grounds for relief available to the moving party.” The form has room for four; instruction 12 directs you to “[a]ttach additional pages if you have more than four grounds.” Screen them first against the claims a court will refuse to hear in a § 2255 motion, so the space goes to grounds the court can actually reach.
5. Write the supporting facts for each ground. Rule 2(b)(2). This is the step most motions fail — see below.
6. Assemble exhibits. Attach what you already hold: correspondence, plea and sentencing paperwork, declarations from witnesses, records from your trial attorney’s file.
7. Sign the verification. Rule 2(b)(5) requires the motion to “be signed under penalty of perjury by the movant or by a person authorized to sign it for the movant.” The form’s signature block does double duty — see the § 1746 section below.
8. Make copies. Rule 3(a): “An original and two copies of the motion must be filed with the clerk.” Add one more if you want a file-stamped copy returned; the form’s instruction 8 says you must enclose it and ask.
9. Mail it through legal mail and record the date. Rule 3(d) governs, and the date of deposit is what counts.

Whether you should do all of this yourself is a separate question from how to do it. This page answers the second. The first is covered on the hub for a federal 2255 motion lawyer, which sets out what counsel does at each stage and when a court may appoint one.

What form do I use for a 2255 — Form AO 243, field by field

Form AO 243 is the national form appended to the Rules. Most of it is bookkeeping. Four items decide whether the motion survives the judge’s first look, and they are flagged below.

Table 1. Form AO 243 (Rev. 01/15), item by item: what each field asks, what a sufficient answer contains, and the error courts see most often.

Item	What it asks	What a sufficient answer contains	Most common error
Caption block	Name under which you were convicted; district; docket or case number; place of confinement; prisoner number	The name and criminal docket number exactly as they appear on the judgment, plus your register number	Using a current legal name that does not match the judgment, so the clerk cannot match the motion to the criminal case
1–3	Court that entered the judgment; criminal docket number; date of judgment; date of sentencing; length of sentence	Dates copied from the face of the judgment, not from memory	Giving the verdict or plea date instead of the entry-of-judgment date, which is what starts the § 2255(f)(1) clock
4	Nature of crime (all counts)	Every count of conviction with its statute of conviction	Listing only the lead count, which hides a count the motion may need to reach
5	Plea: not guilty, guilty, or nolo contendere; and what was pleaded to on each count	The plea count by count	Answering “guilty” for a mixed plea, which obscures a plea-specific claim
6–7	Jury or bench trial; whether you testified	One-word answers	—
8–9	Whether you appealed; court, docket number, result, date, citation, grounds raised; certiorari details	The grounds actually raised on appeal, listed	Leaving 9(f) blank — the court uses it to see which claims are procedurally defaulted and which were preserved
10–11	Prior motions, petitions, or applications about this judgment, with grounds, hearings, and results	Every prior post-conviction filing, including any earlier § 2255	Omitting a prior filing. The court will find it on the docket, and it converts the motion into a second or successive one that needs authorization first
12 (a)	“Supporting facts (Do not argue or cite law. Just state the specific facts that support your claim.)” — repeated for Grounds One through Four	Who did what, when, and what it changed. Names, dates, the document not obtained, the witness not called and what that person would have said	The single most common fatal defect. Legal conclusions (“counsel was ineffective,” “my rights were violated”) with no facts underneath
12 (b)–(c)	For each ground: whether it was raised on direct appeal and, if not, why; whether it was raised in any prior post-conviction proceeding	A direct answer, and a real reason for any omission	Leaving (b)(2) blank when the claim was not raised on appeal — the reason given is the start of any cause-and-prejudice showing
13	Any ground not previously presented in some federal court, and your reasons	The list, with reasons	Treating this as duplicative of 12(b) and skipping it
14	Any motion, petition, or appeal now pending in any court on this judgment	Everything pending, with court and docket number	Not disclosing a pending direct appeal, which will usually stall the § 2255
15	Name and address of each attorney at each stage: preliminary hearing, arraignment and plea, trial, sentencing, appeal, post-conviction, and post-conviction appeal	Full names and last known addresses	Leaving it blank on an ineffective-assistance claim — this is how the court reaches trial counsel for a response
16–17	Whether you were sentenced on more than one count or indictment at the same time; any future sentence to serve	Both answered	—
18	Timeliness: if the judgment became final more than a year ago, explain why § 2255’s one-year limitation does not bar the motion	The trigger you rely on under § 2255(f)(1)–(4), with the date and the reason it applies	Leaving it blank. The form footnote reprints all four triggers; a blank answer invites dismissal on timeliness without reaching the claims
Relief requested	“Therefore, movant asks that the Court grant the following relief”	The specific remedy — vacate the conviction, vacate the sentence and resentence, or correct the sentence	Asking for release when the defect alleged goes only to the sentence
Signature block	The § 1746 declaration, the prison-mailing date, the execution date, and the signature	All four completed	Signing without filling in the mailing date, which forfeits the easiest proof of a timely Rule 3(d) filing
Last page (IFP)	In forma pauperis declaration	Completed if you are asking for appointed counsel, transcripts, or witness fees	Skipping it because “there’s no filing fee” — true, but the declaration is how the judge gets your indigency on the record

Source: Form AO 243 (Rev. 01/15), Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings.

Two of the form’s own instructions are worth reading twice. Instruction 5: “You do not need to cite law. You may submit additional pages if necessary… If you want to submit a brief or arguments, you must submit them in a separate memorandum.” Instruction 7: “In this motion, you may challenge the judgment entered by only one court” — the form’s restatement of Rule 2(d), which requires a separate motion for each judgment.

Rule 2: what the motion must actually contain

Rule 2 of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings is short and every clause is operative. Rule 2(a) requires that the application take the form of “a motion to vacate, set aside, or correct the sentence.” Rule 2(b) then requires that the motion:

“(1) specify all the grounds for relief available to the moving party; (2) state the facts supporting each ground; (3) state the relief requested; (4) be printed, typewritten, or legibly handwritten; and (5) be signed under penalty of perjury by the movant or by a person authorized to sign it for the movant.”

Rule 2(c) supplies the standard-form requirement; Rule 2(d) requires a separate motion for each judgment attacked.

One provision of the 2004 amendments is worth knowing before you panic about a form you are not sure is right. The Committee deleted the old rule that let a clerk return an insufficient motion, because after AEDPA “the court’s dismissal of a motion because it is not in proper form may pose a significant penalty for a moving party, who may not be able to file another motion within the one-year limitations period.” Under revised Rule 3(b) the clerk is required to file the motion even if it fails to comply with Rule 2(b), and the court then requires a corrected version. Your imperfect but timely motion gets docketed; the date is preserved.

That does not make Rule 2(b) optional. It means the penalty for a defective motion arrives at the next stage instead of the counter.

The pleading defect that sinks most pro se motions

Rule 2(b)(2) — “state the facts supporting each ground” — is where most § 2255 motions fail, and the Supreme Court has explained exactly why the standard is higher than people expect.

In Mayle v. Felix, 545 U.S. 644 (2005), the Court contrasted habeas pleading with ordinary civil pleading: “Habeas Corpus Rule 2(c) is more demanding. It provides that the petition must ‘specify all the grounds for relief available to the petitioner’ and ‘state the facts supporting each ground.'” The Court quoted the Advisory Committee’s own diagnosis: “In the past, petitions have frequently contained mere conclusions of law, unsupported by any facts. [But] it is the relationship of the facts to the claim asserted that is important.” And from the Note to Rule 4: “‘[N]otice’ pleading is not sufficient, for the petition is expected to state facts that point to a real possibility of constitutional error.” Rule 2(c) of the § 2254 Rules and Rule 2(b) of the § 2255 Rules impose the same requirement.

The consequence sits in Rule 4(b): the judge must promptly examine the motion, and “[i]f it plainly appears from the motion, any attached exhibits, and the record of prior proceedings that the moving party is not entitled to relief, the judge must dismiss the motion.” Must — not may. A ground stated as a conclusion plainly shows no entitlement to relief, because there is nothing in it for the record to be measured against.

What the difference looks like on the page:

• A conclusion: “Counsel was ineffective because he failed to investigate my case.”
• Facts: “On [date] I gave counsel the name and telephone number of [witness], who was with me at [place] on the night of [date]. Counsel never contacted him. [Witness] would have testified that I was not present at the location described by the Government’s witness. I attach [witness]’s declaration.”

The second version survives Rule 4(b) because the record cannot plainly refute it. The first does not, because there is nothing for the record to refute. The categories of attorney failure that courts have actually accepted, and the evidence each one requires, are set out on ineffective assistance of counsel; if your claim concerns advice about a plea, start with guilty plea ineffective assistance. Which claims are worth pleading at all is the subject of grounds for a 2255 motion.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: When we take over a case where a pro se motion has already been dismissed, the order almost never says the claim was weak. It says the allegations were conclusory. Those are different failures with different fixes, and only one of them is about the underlying facts. The discipline we apply to a draft is to read every ground and ask what a hostile reader could point to in the existing record to refute it in one line. If the answer is “the whole thing,” the ground needs facts, not adjectives.

Rule 3: where to file, how many copies, and what it costs

Copies. Rule 3(a): “An original and two copies of the motion must be filed with the clerk.” Three sets total. If you want a stamped copy back, the form’s instruction 8 tells you to enclose an additional copy and ask the court to file-stamp and return it — the cheapest proof of filing available to someone who cannot check a docket.

Where. The clerk of the district court that entered the judgment. Rule 3(b) then does two things automatically: the clerk “must file the motion and enter it on the criminal docket of the case in which the challenged judgment was entered,” and “must then deliver or serve a copy of the motion on the United States attorney in that district, together with a notice of its filing.” You do not serve the Government yourself. There is no summons, no complaint, and no respondent to name — the Advisory Committee Note to Rule 2 explains that because the application is a motion, “there is no requirement that the movant name a respondent,” and the United States Attorney for the district of the judgment is the proper party to oppose it.

Cost. Nothing. The Advisory Committee Note to Rule 3 states: “There is no filing fee required of a movant under these rules. This is a change from the practice of charging $15 and is done to recognize specifically the nature of a § 2255 motion as being a continuation of the criminal case whose judgment is under attack.” Anyone who tells you a § 2255 motion costs $5 or $350 to file is describing a habeas petition or a civil complaint. A state prisoner does pay a fee, because that filing is a civil petition under a different statute — see 28 U.S.C. § 2254.

The in forma pauperis declaration on the last page of the form is still worth completing even though no fee is due. The Advisory Committee said why: the affidavit stays attached “so that the judge may appoint counsel, order the government to pay witness fees, allow docketing of an appeal, and grant any other rights to which an indigent is entitled in the course of a § 2255 motion.” It also requires a certificate from an officer at your institution showing the balance in your account.

Signing and verifying: the 28 U.S.C. § 1746 declaration

Rule 2(b)(5) requires the motion to be signed under penalty of perjury. You do not need a notary. 28 U.S.C. § 1746 provides that wherever federal law requires a sworn statement or affidavit, the matter “may, with like force and effect, be supported, evidenced, established, or proved by the unsworn declaration… subscribed by him, as true under penalty of perjury, and dated,” in substantially this form for a declaration executed inside the United States:

“I declare (or certify, verify, or state) under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed on (date). (Signature)”

The 1982 Advisory Committee Note to Rule 2 adopted § 1746 for exactly this population: the statute is “intended to encompass prisoner litigation,” and the alternative “is especially appropriate in such cases because a notary might not be readily available.”

Form AO 243’s signature block combines the § 1746 declaration with the Rule 3(d) mailing proof in a single sentence: “I declare (or certify, verify, or state) under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct and that this Motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 was placed in the prison mailing system on ______ (month, date, year).” Fill in that blank. It is the easiest timeliness evidence you will ever create, and it costs nothing.

Two warnings. The form’s instruction 4 is not decorative — “If you make a false statement of a material fact, you may be prosecuted for perjury.” And under the 2004 amendment to Rule 2(b)(5), someone other than the movant may sign, but only if actually authorized; courts apply next-friend standing analysis to that question.

Rule 3(d): filing from prison and proving the date

If you are confined, the date the clerk stamps the motion is not your filing date. The deposit date is.

The rule descends from Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266 (1988), where the Supreme Court held that a pro se prisoner’s notice of appeal is filed at the moment of delivery to prison authorities for forwarding. The Court’s reasoning was practical: pro se prisoners “cannot take the steps other litigants can take to monitor the processing of their notices,” cannot walk a filing to the courthouse, and cannot confirm receipt — and the rule is administrable because the prisoner “hands it over to prison authorities who have well-developed procedures for recording the date and time at which they receive papers for mailing.”

Rule 3(d) codifies that for § 2255 motions, and adds two conditions people miss:

“A paper filed by an inmate confined in an institution is timely if deposited in the institution’s internal mailing system on or before the last day for filing. If an institution has a system designed for legal mail, the inmate must use that system to receive the benefit of this rule. Timely filing may be shown by a declaration in compliance with 28 U.S.C. § 1746 or by a notarized statement, either of which must set forth the date of deposit and state that first-class postage has been prepaid.”

Three operational points follow. First, use the legal-mail system; general outgoing mail may not qualify where a legal-mail system exists. Second, the declaration must state both the date of deposit and that first-class postage was prepaid — a declaration giving only the date is incomplete on the rule’s own terms. Third, keep whatever receipt the institution issues, and note the date in your own records. How courts resolve disputes about the deposit date is covered on the prisoner mailbox rule.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: Legal-mail logging practice is not uniform across institutions, and the burden of proving the deposit date falls on the person who deposited it. The habit worth building is boring and effective: use the legal-mail system every time, complete the declaration on the form with both the date and the postage statement, and ask the mailroom for whatever record it gives. On a filing that is close to the § 2255(f) date, that piece of paper is the difference between a decision on the merits and a dismissal on timeliness.

Attaching exhibits, affidavits, and records

Attach what you have. Rule 4(b) directs the judge to examine “the motion, any attached exhibits, and the record of prior proceedings,” which means your exhibits are part of what the court weighs at the first look — before the Government has answered and before anyone decides whether a hearing is warranted.

What is usually worth attaching:

• Declarations from witnesses, signed under penalty of perjury per § 1746. A named witness with a signed statement is a different filing from a named witness described in your own words.
• Correspondence with trial counsel showing what you asked for and what you were told.
• Documents from counsel’s file that show what was and was not investigated.
• Plea and sentencing paperwork — the plea agreement, the written judgment, and any statement of reasons you hold.
• Institution records where the claim depends on dates you can document.

Do not attach the whole trial transcript if you have it; cite the pages. And do not delay a filing to chase an exhibit you cannot get before the deadline — see the transcripts FAQ below, and the amendment section above it. Where the claim is that trial counsel failed you, the specific evidence each category of failure requires is set out on ineffective assistance of counsel.

Later in the case, Rule 7 lets the judge expand the record with letters, documents, exhibits, and answers under oath, and Rule 6 allows discovery for good cause. Those are tools for after filing. What happens at each stage once the motion is docketed is set out on what happens after filing a 2255.

Raise every claim in this one motion

The form’s instruction 9 is in bold capitals for a reason: “CAUTION: You must include in this motion all the grounds for relief from the conviction or sentence that you challenge. And you must state the facts that support each ground. If you fail to set forth all the grounds in this motion, you may be barred from presenting additional grounds at a later date.”

Rule 2(b)(1) says the same thing in rule language: specify all the grounds available.

The reason is 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h). A second or successive motion must be certified by a court of appeals panel, and only two things will get it certified: newly discovered evidence that would establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder would have found the movant guilty, or a new rule of constitutional law made retroactive by the Supreme Court and previously unavailable. In Bowe v. United States, 607 U.S. 13 (2026), the Supreme Court confirmed that § 2255(h)’s cross-reference to § 2244 “incorporates the procedures in §2244 only as they relate to how a panel certifies a second or successive filing,” and that § 2244(b)(1)’s automatic dismissal of previously presented claims applies to state prisoners rather than to federal movants. Those two § 2255(h) conditions are, in the Court’s phrase from Jones v. Hendrix, the “two—and only two—conditions in which a second or successive §2255 motion may proceed.”

Read the two conditions against the claim you are thinking of holding back. Neither of them is “I thought of a better argument.” Neither is “my first motion was badly written.” A claim that existed and was available when the first motion was filed, and was simply left out, does not come back. The authorization process itself is covered on second or successive 2255.

A separate bar runs alongside it. A claim you could have raised on direct appeal and did not is generally defaulted, and reaching it in a § 2255 motion requires showing cause and prejudice — which is why question 12(b)(2) on the form asks you to explain any claim you left out of your appeal. That doctrine is covered on procedural default, and whether a given claim belonged on appeal at all is worked through on direct appeal vs 2255.

This is why sequencing matters more here than in almost any other filing. Investigation has to precede filing, because filing closes the set of claims — and the one-year clock in § 2255(f) is running the entire time.

Can I amend my motion later? Rule 15 and relation back

Sometimes, and the timing is everything.

Rule 12 of the § 2255 Rules makes the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure applicable to the extent they are not inconsistent, which brings in Fed. R. Civ. P. 15. Under Rule 15(a)(1) a party may amend once as a matter of course within 21 days after serving the pleading, or within 21 days after service of a responsive pleading or a Rule 12 motion, whichever is earlier. After that, amendment requires the opposing party’s written consent or the court’s leave, and “[t]he court should freely give leave when justice so requires.”

The hard question is not permission. It is the calendar. Once the § 2255(f) year has run, a new claim is timely only if it relates back under Rule 15(c)(1)(B), which allows relation back where “the amendment asserts a claim or defense that arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out—or attempted to be set out—in the original pleading.”

Mayle v. Felix decides what that means in post-conviction practice, and the answer is narrow. An amended petition “does not relate back (and thereby escape AEDPA’s one-year time limit) when it asserts a new ground for relief supported by facts that differ in both time and type from those the original pleading set forth.” The Court rejected the broader reading under which any claim arising from the same trial, conviction, or sentence would relate back — because “virtually any new claim introduced in an amended petition will relate back” under that test, which would repeal the limitation period in practice. What is required is “a common ‘core of operative facts’ uniting the original and newly asserted claims.”

There is a second timing line, and it is later than most people assume it is. In Rivers v. Guerrero, 605 U.S. 443 (2025), a unanimous Court held that “[o]nce a district court enters its judgment with respect to a first-filed habeas petition, a second-in-time filing qualifies as a ‘second or successive application.'” The dividing line is the district court’s judgment, not the end of the appeal — and the Court observed that a district court could not have granted a Rule 15 motion to amend while the case was on appeal anyway, because jurisdiction had shifted to the court of appeals. The practical rule: an amendment filed before judgment is an amendment; a filing after judgment is a new motion needing authorization.

Filing when the deadline is close

If your § 2255(f) date is weeks away and your investigation is not finished, file. A timely motion that is thin can be supplemented; an untimely motion generally cannot be rescued.

What that looks like in practice:

• File the form with every ground you can currently identify, each with the facts you actually have. Do not leave a ground out because the evidence is incomplete — § 2255(h) is the reason.
• Complete question 18 with the § 2255(f) trigger you rely on and the date, even if you believe the answer is obvious.
• Complete the signature block, including the prison-mailing date.
• Amend promptly once the record arrives, remembering that a post-deadline amendment must share a common core of operative facts with something already pled.
• Do not wait on transcripts. See below.

Two doctrines sit behind this, and neither is a plan. The Advisory Committee Note to Rule 3(c) records that “every circuit that has addressed the issue has taken the position that equitable tolling of the statute of limitations is available in appropriate circumstances,” while noting the Supreme Court has not addressed it directly for § 2255. That is a doctrine for extraordinary circumstances, not for a late filing — see equitable tolling. And Rule 3(b)’s requirement that the clerk docket even a non-compliant motion preserves your date while a corrected version is prepared. Neither is a substitute for filing on time.

If you are working from a state conviction rather than a federal one, the form and the rules are different; start with petition for writ of habeas corpus. And if you are unsure whether § 2255 is your statute at all, what is a 2255 motion explains the statute subsection by subsection.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a boutique federal criminal defense and appellate firm founded in 2019, practicing nationwide on an intentionally small caseload. Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is a 2026 Best Lawyers in America honoree for Appellate Practice and Chambers USA 2026 ranked for white-collar litigation, and has been admitted pro hac vice in federal courts from Montana to Florida.

Because the motion is filed in the sentencing court, the firm appears in whichever district entered the judgment. What a represented § 2255 engagement involves — record and transcript acquisition, investigation, affidavit development, and the drafting decisions above — is set out on the hub page for a federal 2255 motion lawyer.

Speak with a federal post-conviction attorney

If a deadline is close, the two things worth knowing before anything else are the date your judgment became final and whether any of the other three § 2255(f) triggers gives you a later date. Both can be worked out from the judgment and the appellate docket.

Schedule a consultation or call (843) 620-1100. The firm represents clients in federal courts nationwide. If you are filing pro se and simply want the calendar checked, say so when you book — and in the meantime, post-conviction deadlines sets out every clock that runs after a federal conviction and 2255 grant rate statistics sets expectations with data rather than adjectives.

Frequently Asked Questions About Filing a § 2255 Motion

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026