Charles Jones Blog

While some people designate themselves or an attorney as their registered agents, we offer up some reasons why a professional registered agent may be a good investment. What is the purpose of a registered agent? If you conduct business in more than one state and you don’t have a physical presence you need to have an address where legal documents can be served, referred to as a registered agent for service of process.  This is where your registered agent will come in – giving you the address you need legally. A service of process is the first act of informing you of your participation in a law suit. Failure to respond in a timely fashion can result in potentially devastating default judgments.

But, what do you expect from your registered agent?  For some it is simply a legal requirement for which they, rarely if ever, need. For others it is a necessity to their business as they rely on a registered agent, as it enables them to expand their business and depend upon their agent to properly receive and forward service of process as well as tax notices and annual reports.

Why the difference?  Basically some companies will be served legal papers more than others. Once served a company has a specified period of time to respond. If your registered agent is not on the ball – you can face stiff penalties and/or default judgments for failing to respond.  However, when you create a relationship with your registered agent you may not know how often or even if you will be served legal documents.  So, you may not realize the importance until your registered agent is tapped to start doing its job for you!   Another consideration might be that there are additional services that may be provided by your registered agent.

At Signature Information Solutions®, we are also able to provide entity formations, qualifications, name reservations, mergers, dissolutions, corporate document retrieval services, court record search and retrieval and more. What is important to you when looking to your registered agent? What do you think? Are the extra services important? Or do you just need agent services to manage your service of process?

Patrick T. Roe

Senior Vice President, Marketing & Sales