Expert: John Varghese - 1/26/2010

Question
Greetings and thank you for taking my question.

I am a partner in a small LLC.  We incorporated over the internet, and the company that helped us was our registered agent for free for the first year.  They now want to charge us $250 for that service.

Can individuals act as their LLC's registered agent?  In other words, could I, or my partner, or our spouses (who are not part of the company) act as the registered agent?  Do we need to pay someone for this?

Thank you

Answer
Dear Ted,

First of all, we need to know in which country and in which state you have registered the LLC, since it depends on state laws, whether individuals acts as LLC's registered agent. Generally there is no ban for any person to act as an agent of LLC. Either you, your partner, spouses or children can act as registered agents.However it would be only fair to pay the fees if you are utlising the services of any person as agent.it is good from a contractual point of view also, since if you do not pay your agent, you cannot claim any reasonable standards- simply because you are not supposed to count the teeth of a gifted horse!

Regards

John Varghese