Searching Connecticut's site for a certificate of good standing gets you nowhere, and the reason is a statutory rewrite.

The Bottom Line for Connecticut LLCs

Connecticut issues this through your Business.CT.gov account, and the only real decision is which version you buy. The annual report has to be current before you qualify for any of them.

The naming is the trap. The legislature replaced the phrase certificate of good standing for a limited liability company throughout the LLC statute, and the section's own history note credits the change to Public Act 17-108, so the term your bank uses and the term Connecticut prints are now two different names for one document. There is a smaller inconsistency inside the state's own site as well, where the article heading and the rows of the table underneath it use different labels for the same family of documents. Choose by the description in the row, not by the heading above it.

What Connecticut Actually Calls It

Connecticut issues this as the Certificate of Legal Existence, through Connecticut Secretary of the State. Ask a bank or another state's filing office for a certificate of good standing and this is what you send them.

The certificate verifies that the company is registered with the Secretary of the State and is current with the filing obligations of that office. A certificate issued under section 34-247j may be relied upon as conclusive evidence of the facts set forth in it.

Connecticut also uses Certificate of Existence, Express Certificate of Existence for Limited Liability Companies, Short-form Certificate of Existence for Limited Liability Companies, Long-form Certificate of Existence for Limited Liability Companies for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

The request almost always originates outside Connecticut. Registering the LLC to do business in another state leads by a wide margin, because the receiving state wants the home state's word that the company exists and is current. Lenders and banks ask at underwriting rather than at account opening. A buyer's lawyer asks during a sale, and that is usually where the longer version earns its keep, because it carries the filing history instead of a single status line. Landlords and large customers ask occasionally as a contract condition. License renewals rarely do.

What It Costs in Connecticut

Connecticut charges $50 for the Certificate of Legal Existence. A Long-form Certificate of Existence for Limited Liability Companies costs $100.

Expedited service is available: Expedited service for $50.

Where this fee comes from: Certificate of Legal Existence Forms and Fees table: "Express Certificate of Existence for Limited Liability Companies (file online)" fee "$50", and "Short-form Certificate of Existence for Limited Liability Companies. reflects all name changes. (file online)" fee "$50". Conn. Gen. Stat. section 34-243u(b)(3) sets the same figure: "for the issuance of a certificate of legal existence of a domestic or registered foreign limited liability company, fifty dollars".

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Legal Existence online.

Connecticut does not publish a turnaround time for the Certificate of Legal Existence, so this page does not quote one.

Order it on the Connecticut site

A Business.CT.gov account is required. Verifying a certificate and viewing previously requested certificates are listed at $0.

Everything runs behind a Business.CT.gov login, and expedited handling is sold only on that path, so a paper workaround is not a way around the account. Weigh the expedited option against what the state itself says about it: its guidance is that most filings made through that system are accepted automatically, which makes paying for speed unnecessary in the ordinary case. The harder problem is timing. None of the state's pages on this document commit to a turnaround, so you cannot promise a closing date on the strength of a published schedule. Order early and treat the arrival of the document, not the placing of the order, as the milestone.

1. 1

   Set up or sign in to your Business.CT.gov account

   The order, the payment and the expedited option all sit behind that login. If nobody at the company has an account yet, create one well before the day the certificate is due.

2. 2

   Check the annual report before anything else

   Open the entity's record and confirm the annual report is current. That is the condition the Secretary's guidance puts on qualifying, and it is the one thing you can fix yourself in the same sitting.

3. 3

   Ask the requester which version they want

   The state sells more than one version to LLCs. One reflects name changes, another carries the filing history. Buying the wrong one means buying twice, so get the answer in writing before you order.

4. 4

   Place the order and pay

   The filing system walks the request through from the account. Expedited handling is offered on the same screen, against the state's own view that most submissions clear automatically without it.

5. 5

   Download it and check the company name

   The certificate prints the name exactly as the state holds it. If the requester's paperwork spells it differently, resolve that before you send, because a name mismatch is the usual reason one of these comes back.

What Puts You Out of Standing in Connecticut

Before Connecticut will issue the Certificate of Legal Existence, your filings with the state's business filing office have to be current. No separate tax clearance from a revenue agency is part of it.

The statute makes issuance unconditional on request, and the Secretary of the State's guidance names only the annual report. No Department of Revenue Services step appears in either source.

The long form is limited to domestic companies and cannot be expedited: "Long-form Certificate of Existence for Limited Liability Companies. domestic only; cannot be expedited."

Connecticut's two sources point in slightly different directions, and knowing which one governs saves an argument. The statute says the Secretary of the State shall issue the certificate on the request of any person and attaches no condition. The Secretary's own guidance to filers says the annual report must be up to date to qualify. The guidance is the operational rule the office publishes, so plan around the report: if it is outstanding, file it through the same account before you order, because ordering first means paying and then waiting for a refusal. That report is a Secretary of the State obligation. A tax balance sits with the Department of Revenue Services and appears in neither source behind this document.

How Long It Stays Good in Connecticut

Connecticut publishes nothing about how long the Certificate of Legal Existence stays current. Whoever asked you for it does: banks, lenders and other states' filing offices each set their own recency rule, and that window is theirs, not Connecticut's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

Connecticut says nothing about how long this stays current, which pushes the whole question onto the party that asked. Two habits follow from that. Order close to the date you actually need it rather than when you start assembling the file, because a certificate that waits three weeks in a deal folder arrives already aged. And because your account holds the certificates you have ordered before, forwarding an old one by accident is easy: check the issue date printed on the file you are attaching, not the date you downloaded it.

What We Could Not Confirm for Connecticut

These pages only state what a primary source establishes. For Connecticut we could not confirm the following, so this page does not answer it:

• whether the state will apostille it for use abroad

Who to Ask in Connecticut

The Connecticut Secretary of the State's business services keep the entity record and issue this certificate, and the whole relationship runs through Business.CT.gov rather than a separate filing portal. Ordering, annual reports and the login itself all live there. A question about a tax registration, sales tax or withholding goes to the Department of Revenue Services, a different agency whose records are not what this certificate reports on. If the requester wants the version carrying your filing history and the company was formed outside Connecticut, raise that early, because that version is limited to companies formed here.

Sources

• business.ct.gov/knowledge-base/articles/certificate-of-legal-existence-forms-and-fees
• business.ct.gov/knowledge-base/articles/sots/certificates-of-legal-existence
• business.ct.gov/knowledge-base/articles/expedited-services
• cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_613a.htm
• business.ct.gov/business-services/business-forms-and-fees

Every figure on this page was read from a Connecticut government source, not from a formation service. Confidence in this record: high. See our editorial policy for how these are verified and corrected.