Maryland Registered Agent

Yes, you can be your own registered agent in Maryland. However, after considering the registered agent requirements most business owners elect to hire a registered agent service instead. Why? Well although being your own registered agent will cost you $0, a Maryland registered agent’s name and address becomes part of the public record.  Additionally, the registered agent is required to be available to accept service of process during normal business hours 5 days a week.

We don’t want ALL of your business mail. It’s not what we do. And it wouldn’t serve you well. You wouldn’t have unique address or suite number. Any mail we receive on your behalf would come to to Northwest Registered Agent, care of you.

But we understand that businesses and clients sometimes reach out to you through your registered agent. Through us. That’s why we give you 5 FREE scans of regular business mail a year. You can request any additional documents to be forwarded at a per document rate of $15.

Service on your registered agent is legal proof that you were notified. Regardless of whether you actually receive the documents your Maryland registered agent signs for, once they accept the documents, you’ve been notified. This is a serious responsibility that we do not take lightly. This is how it works:

• A process server, the county sheriff, or any third party will walk into our office and hand us the documents (service of process), which we sign for.
• The process server then gives an affidavit (a receipt of service) to the court as confirmation that they “served” us.

Note: If you’ve hired Northwest, you’ve received your documents long before the process server hands in their affidavit to the court—because we scanned them to your online account within minutes of having been served.

Your business could suffer greatly if your registered agent loses important legal documents. A lost legal document could result in legal actions being taken against your business without you knowing about it.

In this scenario, a judge may rule a default judgment against your business. If annual reports aren’t filed, the state could dissolve your business, and again, you might not know about it until it’s too late. But if you hire our registered agent service, you can rest assured that you’ll be notified immediately if your company is served with a lawsuit or needs to file a report with the state of Maryland.

Here’s how to do a Maryland business name search:

• Type in the name of the company you’re searching for.
• In the results, you’ll find the registered agent’s name and registered office street address.

If you want to legally notify a business through their Maryland registered agent service, just send a certified letter directly to the registered agent name and registered office address.

In Maryland, to resign as a registered agent, you need to submit a Statement of Resignation of Resident Agent to the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation. For a more detailed walkthrough, you can refer to our guide on how to resign as a registered agent in Maryland.

You should hire a registered agent before you register your LLC or corporation because you’ll need to list your registered agent on your Maryland Articles of Organization or Articles of Incorporation. Once you hire Northwest as your registered agent, we’ll give you the forms and instructions you need to complete your business registration filing.