NJ Service of process on a limited liability company
The papers go to the registered office on record. Where the registered agent cannot be found there, the filing office forwards them, and service completes at the earliest of actual receipt, the return receipt, or five days after the letter is deposited with the Postal Service. In the Special Civil Part the court clerk does the mailing himself, and an ordinary-mail copy that is simply never returned is enough.
Two things on this page work against us and are printed anyway: New Jersey publishes no registered-agent address in its free search, so the address check that works in New York cannot run here — and no New Jersey state court is being read, which is where most New Jersey civil cases are filed.
The business name search is genuinely free, has no captcha and answers in well under a second. It just does not carry the field this product is about.
So we do not show you a New Jersey envelope. A New Jersey company can be looked up by name and watched in the two federal courts, and the address panel says plainly that we cannot check it rather than showing you a blank field that implies we could. Look up a company by name — free, no account, no card.
N.J.S.A. 42:2C-17 is the registered-agent section of the Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act. Every New Jersey LLC has to keep a registered agent at a registered office, and the address of that office is the address the state has. Where the agent cannot be found at it, the section makes the filing office an agent for service and has the papers forwarded by mail to the registered office on record.
That is the trap, and it is worth saying slowly. The fallback route mails the papers to the address whose failure triggered the fallback in the first place. And the service does not wait for anyone to read them: it completes at the earliest of actual receipt, the date on the return receipt, or five days after the notice is deposited with the United States Postal Service.
N.J.S.A. 42:2C-17(e) adds one more thing, which is unusual and which almost nobody uses: the filing office is required to keep a record of each process, notice and demand served on it in that way.
The filing office shall keep a record of each process, notice, and demand served.
Excerpt · N.J.S.A. 42:2C-17(e)Whether that register can be inspected is an open question we have not answered. We are not going to describe it as something we read, because we do not.
The court rule matters more than the statute for most small businesses. Rule 6:2-3(d) governs the Special Civil Part, which handles most smaller money claims. There the court clerk mails the summons and complaint by certified mail and by ordinary mail together. If the certified copy comes back unclaimed or refused but the ordinary copy is not returned, the service stands. An ordinary letter delivered to a former office, an old suite or a shared mailbox is never returned to sender, so it looks exactly like a letter that arrived.
For larger claims in the Law Division, Rule 4:4-4 asks for personal delivery first, and allows certified plus ordinary mail after an affidavit of diligent inquiry. "Personal" there can mean handing the papers to an employee at the office, which is its own way of ending up in a drawer.
The Special Civil Part is not a minor corner of the court system. In court year 2026 it accounted for 496,789 of 590,959 civil filings — 84.06%. Narrow the question to purely commercial disputes on both sides of the comparison and the share is around 80%. Either way, the docket where a clerk serves by mail is the docket where most New Jersey cases are.
STEP 01
A supplier, a card processor, a contractor or a lender files in the Special Civil Part against your company.
STEP 02
Certified and ordinary mail go out together, to whichever address the plaintiff supplied from the state record.
STEP 03
Unclaimed or refused. That alone does not stop anything, which is the part owners find hardest to believe.
STEP 04
The ordinary copy is not returned, so the service stands and the case goes on without you in it.
New York amended its LLC and corporation statutes in 2023 so that process served electronically on the Department of State produces an email to the company. New Jersey has no equivalent, and it is not an oversight that might be fixed by a form. N.J.S.A. 42:2C-89 says the Act does not authorize electronic delivery of the notices described in 15 U.S.C. § 7003(b) — the category that covers court pleadings and notices. The route is closed by statute.
So in New Jersey the mail is the notice, and the only other signal is the court record itself, once it exists.
New Jersey offers business-filing notification services, and they are useful for what they are. They watch the business record — annual reports, registered-agent changes, status changes at the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services. A lawsuit is not a business filing. It does not touch that record, so it produces no notification from any of them, no matter how the service is configured. Owners reasonably assume otherwise, and the assumption is the gap this product exists in.
Printed here so it is readable before anyone pays for anything. The maintained version, source by source with each source's gaps at equal weight, is on our coverage page.
Read today, hourly: the new-filings feeds published by the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey and by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. Two feeds. Plus the free state business search, by company name, for the lookup itself.
Read that list again before you buy anything for New Jersey. The honest description of New Jersey coverage today is: the company is confirmed in the register, two federal court feeds are polled hourly, and no state court is watched. If that is not worth paying for, it is not worth paying for — we would rather you knew now.
Ordinarily through the registered agent at the registered office. Where the agent cannot be found there, N.J.S.A. 42:2C-17 makes the filing office an agent for service, and the papers are forwarded by mail to the registered office on record. Service then completes at the earliest of actual receipt, the date shown on the return receipt, or five days after the notice is deposited with the United States Postal Service.
In the Special Civil Part, yes. The clerk mails the summons and complaint by certified mail and by ordinary mail together under Rule 6:2-3(d). If the certified copy comes back unclaimed or refused but the ordinary copy is not returned, the service stands. Nobody has to sign for anything.
No, and it cannot. N.J.S.A. 42:2C-89 says the Act does not authorize electronic delivery of the notices described in 15 U.S.C. § 7003(b), which covers court pleadings and notices. New York has such a route since 2023; New Jersey is statutorily foreclosed from one.
No. It publishes the legal name, a ten-digit entity identifier, the entity type, the city and the incorporation date, and nothing else. The agent and the service address sit behind a paid Status Report, currently $6.25 for one entity. We cannot show you where a lawsuit would be mailed in New Jersey, and we will not guess.
No. Those services alert on changes to the business record — annual reports, agent filings, status changes. A lawsuit is not a business filing and does not appear in that record.
New York works differently, and its register is open data — how an LLC is served in New York. Nothing on this page is legal advice, no date is calculated anywhere on it, and DocketEye is not a registered agent (what that means) and is not an insurer.
A New Jersey company can be looked up by name, free, with no account and no card. What the lookup cannot do is show you the envelope, because the state does not publish it — and we would rather say that than guess.
We never ask for your EIN or your Social Security number. Address read-back is New York today. In New Jersey, two federal court feeds are polled hourly and no state court is watched.