A plaintiff does not have to find you.They only have to find Albany.

The statute, and what each section does

N.Y. Limited Liability Company Law § 301 makes the Secretary of State the agent of every domestic LLC for service of process. It is not an option the owner chooses at formation and there is no way to decline it. A company may name a registered agent as well, and many do — but that adds a second route rather than closing the first.

N.Y. Limited Liability Company Law § 303 is the one to read. It sets out how service on the Secretary of State is actually made — duplicate copies delivered to the Department of State in Albany, with a fee — and it says that the service is legally complete when the Secretary of State is served. Only then does it turn to the envelope:

Read the two halves in that order and the shape of the problem is plain: the event that binds your company happens in Albany, and the letter is what happens next. The mailing is a duty the Department discharges by sending. Nothing in the section makes the first half depend on the second.

N.Y. Business Corporation Law § 306 is the corporation version of the same arrangement, in nearly the same words. If you hold corporations as well as LLCs, the mechanism is the one described on this page.

Who the envelope is actually addressed to

The New York register carries two things for each company: a name for service of process and a post office address. The name is the part almost nobody looks at, and it is frequently not the company.

We read a 2,400-row sample of live domestic-LLC records out of the state register on 15 September 2026. 1,213 of those 2,400 rows — 50.5% — named a third party rather than the company itself: a formation service, a commercial agent, a law firm, an accountant. That is a sample, not the whole register, and the true share could sit either side of it.

It matters because of what a name in that field means. The letter is addressed to whoever is named. It reaches you only while that arrangement is live — while the invoice is paid, while the firm still handles your work, while somebody there still knows to forward it — and the register cannot tell us whether any of that is still true. A lapsed arrangement looks exactly like a live one from the outside.

See what the register holds for your own company. The check is free, it needs no account and no card, and it reads the same public record a plaintiff's lawyer would: look up the address New York holds for your LLC. We do not ask for your EIN or your Social Security number, and we do not keep a copy of what you looked up.

The address on file is the thing that changes

If the address the Department of State holds is not somewhere your mail is read, that is the root of the problem, and it is fixed at the source rather than by anything we sell. In New York the address the Department holds is changed by filing a Certificate of Change with the Department of State. The filing fee is $30.

That is a form and a fee, stated as fact. It is not advice that you should file one, and we do not do deadline arithmetic of any kind. We do not file it, we do not sell it, and we are not your registered agent — see why that distinction matters. Commercial registered-agent services exist and charge roughly $100 to $125 a company a year; we have no arrangement with any of them.

What a change of address does is redirect the letter in step 4. What it cannot do is tell you that something has already been filed against you, because that is a different fact living in a different place — a court docket.

The 2023 electronic-service amendment, and its limits

New York amended § 303 and BCL § 306 in 2023 to allow process to be served on the Department of State electronically. Where that route is used, the Department emails the entity at an email address the company has designated for the purpose. That is a genuinely earlier signal than any docket, and it is worth knowing about.

Three honest limits, because this is the part that gets oversold:

• It fires only on electronic service. Delivering the papers to Albany in person remains available and remains ordinary. A plaintiff who does that produces no email.
• It requires the company to have designated an address. A company that never did gets nothing, and the register holds no email for it to use.
• Whether the state's email update service satisfies that designation, or whether a $30 Certificate of Change is needed, is not settled. We have not verified it, so we are not going to tell you which it is.

DocketEye does not receive that email on your behalf. We do not offer a forwarding address, we are not in the path the papers travel, and nothing legally happens if something meant for your company is sent to us.

What we read in New York, and what we do not

Stated 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, and it is generated from the same table the product runs on.

Read today, hourly: the new-filings feeds published by the federal courts — the Southern, Eastern and Northern District of New York, and the bankruptcy courts for the Southern, Eastern, Northern and Western Districts. Plus the New York business register itself, for the address check and for the state's daily change feed.

• The Western District of New York publishes no new-filings feed at all. Its bankruptcy court does; the district court does not. That is a gap we cannot close with the free sources, and we would rather print it than round it away.
• No New York state court is being read today. The Supreme Court new-cases sweep — the one that would cover the 61 county Supreme Courts — is built but is not running, and the coverage page says so per source.
• New York City Civil Court, small claims and housing court are not covered, and the 1,174 town and village courts are a permanent carve-out: no online record of them exists anywhere to read.
• A caption may not name your company. Federal feeds carry the case caption, and most complaint captions name only the first party on each side. In a one-day sample of Southern District filings, 25 of 34 ended in "et al". A company named as a later defendant may not appear in the line we read.
• Served the old way, we see nothing extra. If a plaintiff hands the papers to someone at your office, or to a registered agent, there is no state-register event at all — only the docket, once it exists.

Questions people actually ask

Does the Secretary of State accept service for my New York LLC?

Yes. Under LLC Law § 301 the Secretary of State is the agent of every domestic LLC for service of process, from the day the company is formed. It is not something the owner opts into and not something that can be switched off. Section 303 sets out how that service is made: duplicate copies delivered to the Department of State in Albany, and service is legally complete when the Secretary of State is served.

What address does New York mail my lawsuit to?

The post office address the Department of State holds for service of process on that company. For most LLCs that is the address written on the articles of organization at formation, unless a Certificate of Change has been filed since. It is a public record, and anyone can read it — including the plaintiff.

What happens if the letter goes to an old address?

The service already happened in Albany. The mailing is a separate step, and the statute does not make the service depend on the letter being read. An owner who never sees the envelope can have a default judgment entered without having heard anything about the case. What to do about that is a question for a lawyer; we do not give legal advice and we will not tell you what your options are.

How do I change the address New York holds for my LLC?

By filing a Certificate of Change with the New York Department of State. The filing fee is $30. We do not file it, we do not sell it, and we are not your registered agent.

Is the address on file the same as my registered agent?

No. The Secretary of State is the agent for service on every New York LLC whether or not the company also names a registered agent. Many LLCs carry the name of a formation service in the register rather than their own — in our 2,400-row sample, 1,213 of them did.

Everything on this page describes New York. New Jersey works differently and is worse in one specific way — how an LLC is served in New Jersey. Nothing here is legal advice, no date is calculated anywhere on this page, and DocketEye is not a registered agent and is not an insurer.