Estate Planning and LLCs

Within the realm of asset protection, one of the most important ways our estate planning attorneys can assist you is with a limited liability company (LLC). Whether you run a business making and selling goods from your home or you have an international corporation co-owned by yourself and a few others, an LLC can be a great way to safeguard your property by limiting your personal liability. 

What does this mean exactly? Simply put, if your business garners significant debt and/or a lawsuit is levied against it, your personal assets such as money in your savings account, or real estate property like a family house, will be protected from seizure in order to make reparations.

Creating a Limited Liability Company

Whether you are planning to establish an LLC in Arizona or New Mexico, the process is relatively the same. Steps include:

• Appointing a legal agent: Each state requires an individual or business entity to act as an agent for the LLC (referred to as either a Statutory Agent in Arizona or a Registered Agent in New Mexico, respectively) to receive legal documents and correspondence on behalf of the business. The attorneys at Morris Hall can help facilitate the appointment of your agent, which cannot be the LLC itself for legal purposes.
• File Articles of Organization: These documents pertain to the actual registration of your LLC, to be filed with the appropriate state office. These articles will be essential for estate planning as they will disclose essential information such as the business’s name and headquarters address. The names of the Statutory Agent and LLC organizer will also be listed.
• Consider an Operating Agreement: While not required in either Arizona or New Mexico, our estate planning attorneys can help you go over the terms of an operating agreement, which states how the LLC is to be managed. This document is meant to protect the LLC from outside scrutiny or influence and can bar the state from having a say in how the LLC is to be run. 
• Complete an EIN: A Employer Identification Number is an IRS document stating that more than one person (apart from the proprietor) works within the LLC. This is helpful for tax reasons, as having employees on the books will allow the IRS to consider the LLC as a corporation. 

Having competent and experienced estate planning attorneys in your corner as you start out on this new LLC venture will make things much easier when it comes to protecting your assets. If you are considering starting a limited liability company, we can help.