Frequently Asked Questions

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An LLC, when properly maintained, should bear the financial risk of legal liability that would otherwise be on you and your family. Also, doing business as an LLC (instead of yourself) could increase the appraised value of your business if you ever decide to attract a partner or sell your company.

A Series LLC is a tool designed to be a more convenient and cost-effective method of holding high-worth assets than segregating the assets among multiple traditional LLCs. It can be particularly helpful for a real estate investor to prevent a legal issue connected to one property (such as a slip-and-fall) from resulting in a judgment lien that clouds title on all other properties in the investor's portfolio.

A registered agent is the party appointed by you to receive, on behalf of your LLC, service of process of lawsuits against the LLC as well as official correspondence from government agencies, such as the Alabama Secretary of State or the Alabama Department of Revenue (e.g. tax documents). Your registered agent may be an individual resident of Alabama, an existing Alabama business entity, or a foreign entity registered to do business in Alabama with an office located in Alabama.

Yes, you can list yourself as your LLC's registered agent as long as you are an Alabama resident, and provided you are comfortable with the following consequences of doing so: 

1. Your name will be made public, which will remove some of the anonymity that may come with doing business as an LLC.
2. You will need to list an Alabama street address as your registered office address. Whatever address you list is the address to which lawsuit papers could be mailed or hand-delivered.
3. If you relocate and forget to update your registered office address with the Alabama Secretary of State, lawsuit papers could go to an address that is no longer monitored by you or someone working for you, which could lead to a default judgment being entered against your LLC without you knowing about it.

The Alabama Secretary of State provides this non-exhaustive list of professional registered agents. You can appoint any individual resident of Alabama, an existing Alabama business entity, or a foreign entity registered to do business in Alabama with an office located in Alabama, to be your LLC's registered agent. If you choose not to engage a professional registered agent, then whatever registered agent you select should have airtight systems in place for receiving, processing, and forwarding your mail, promptly notifying you of important correspondence, and keeping the registered office address updated with the Alabama Secretary of State.

A certificate of formation is to an LLC what articles of incorporation are to a corporation: it is the birth certificate of your company. You will want to keep your Certificate of Formation with your company records. You will likely need to present your Certificate of Formation and EIN letter (more on that below) to open a business bank account.

Your Certificate of Name Reservation confirms that the Alabama Secretary of State reserved your chosen LLC name for a period of one year. That means that you have one year from the date appearing on the Certificate in which to form the LLC with the name you reserved. Because we form your LLC at the same time we reserve your LLC name, you will be well ahead of that deadline.

An EIN (Employer Identification Number) is to a company what a Social Security Number is to an individual: the number assigned by the Internal Revenue Service to identify the company for purposes of taxation. Banks vary in their requirements for opening a company bank account but, at a minimum, you should be ready to present a copy of your EIN letter from the IRS and your Certificate of Formation.