This blog post is first in a series of blog posts highlighting changes in the 2009 Iowa Limited Liability Company Act. The new law applies to all LLCs filed in Iowa after January 1, 2009. The new LLC law will apply to older LLCs beginning on January 1, 2011 unless otherwise agreed by the members.
Beginning January 1, 2009, you will no longer file Articles of Organization with the Secretary of State to start your Iowa limited liability company. Instead, you will now file a Certificate of Organization to begin the process. Unless there are changes with the Secretary of State, I do not anticipate the filing fee would change from the current fee of $50.00. (Amazingly, the Iowa Secretary of State’s Web site has no mention of the upcoming changes that I could see).
The Certificate of Organization under the new Iowa LLC law will actually have less detail than Articles of Organization typically had in the past. The only information required for the Certificate of Organization are as follows:
- The name of the limited liability company;
- The street and mailing address of the registered office and the name of the registered agent.
That’s it. The organizer also won’t need to state the the LLC has a perpetual duration in the articles as the new law automatically provides that LLCs have a perpetual duration (just like corporations).
Now, that may seem simple enough to start but there are a number of issues with the new Iowa LLC law that could trap unsuspecting business owners. I will highlight some of those areas in upcoming posts.
An excellent resource on the this topic is Ward on Iowa Limited Liability Company Law, written by Marc Ward of the Dickinson Law Firm. Marc has devoted an entire blog to the changes in the new Iowa LLC law.