Registered Agents: What the Job Is and Whether to Pay for It

What the job is

When someone sues your company, the court papers have to be delivered to a person who is legally authorized to receive them. States solve this by requiring every registered entity to name a registered agent with a physical address in the state. The agent's name and address go on the public record. Process servers, and the state itself, send things there.

That is the whole statutory role. A registered agent does not manage the company, does not file its reports unless separately hired to, and has no authority over it. What the agent does is receive a document and get it to you quickly. For a lawsuit with a twenty-day response clock, "quickly" matters.

States use different names for the same thing: Ohio and Arizona say statutory agent, Michigan and Maryland say resident agent, California says agent for service of process, Pennsylvania requires a registered office and lets a commercial provider stand in for it. New York is the outlier: the Secretary of State is automatically every LLC's agent, and naming a separate one is optional.

Being your own agent

Any adult resident of the state can serve, including you, a co-owner, or an employee. A company can also be its own agent in some states if it has an office there. The requirements are a street address (not a PO box or a virtual mailbox) and someone present during normal business hours.

What you accept by doing it yourself:

• Your address is public. It appears on the state record and will be scraped by marketers. For a home-based business, that may be the deciding factor.
• You must be reachable. If a process server cannot find the agent after reasonable attempts, most states allow service on the secretary of state instead. You then rely on the state forwarding it to whatever address it has.
• Moving means filing. Each change of address is a state form, free in 10 states and $100 at most (Alabama).
• Being served at work. Process servers come to the address on record, in front of staff or customers.

If none of those trouble you, save the money. Plenty of companies run for decades this way.

When paying makes sense

• You work from home and do not want your home address on the public record.
• You travel, keep irregular hours, or have no fixed office in the state.
• The LLC is registered in a state where you do not live (a foreign registration, or a holding company). You need an in-state address and the service provides one.
• You have registrations in several states and want one provider forwarding everything to one inbox.

Of the four services we track, prices run from $125 a year (Northwest) to $249 (LegalZoom). Two include the first year free if they form your LLC, so look at the renewal price, because that's what you'll actually pay. The comparison scores them on exactly that.