Maine sells no document with the words good standing on its face, and that is the first thing to sort out

The Bottom Line for Maine LLCs

Order it from the Bureau's corporate search and it downloads on the spot. The gate is upstream: Maine's statute has the Secretary of State assert that your most recent annual report is on file, so an LLC that is behind will not get a usable document out of the transaction.

31 M.R.S. 1664 lists what the certificate has to state, and one of those items is that the annual report required by section 1519 has been filed. It is drafted as a fact the Secretary of State asserts, not as a field that can go either way. That wording is not universal. Mississippi's parallel provision, built on the same model and with nearly the same list of recitals, says the certificate states whether the report has been filed, and there a late LLC still gets a certificate that reports the lateness. Maine's says that it has been filed. Same statutory family, opposite result for a delinquent owner: in Maine the fix has to come before the order.

What Maine Actually Calls It

Maine issues this as the Certificate of Existence, through Maine Department of the Secretary of State, Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions, Division of Corporations, UCC and Commissions. Ask a bank or another state's filing office for a certificate of good standing and this is what you send them.

The certificate states the LLC's name, that it is duly formed under Maine law and the date of formation, that all fees and penalties owed to the State have been paid where nonpayment would affect its existence, that its most recent annual report has been filed, and whether a certificate of cancellation has been delivered for filing. It is conclusive evidence that the LLC is in existence.

Maine also uses Certificates of Existence - Good Standing, Good Standing/Legal Existence for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

Four situations produce almost all of these requests. Registering your Maine LLC to do business in another state is the most common, because the receiving state's filing office wants the home state's word before it will accept a foreign registration. A bank or an SBA lender asks for one at underwriting. A buyer's or an investor's lawyer asks during diligence on a sale or a raise. A large customer's vendor onboarding asks for it as an upload on a form. Commercial landlords and license renewals ask sometimes rather than usually, and when they do the requester is applying a recency rule of its own to a document whose shelf life Maine itself has not spoken to.

What It Costs in Maine

Maine charges $30 for the Certificate of Existence.

Where this fee comes from: Certificates / Business Corporations, Limited Liability Companies, Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Partnerships / Certificate of Existence $30.00

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Existence online and by mail.

Immediate PDF download online.

Order it on the Maine site

Ordered through the Interactive Corporate Services corporate search. The site says some fee based services may require a credit card or an InforME subscription.

The order lives inside the corporate search rather than in a forms library, which is where people give up looking: you search the entity, open its record, and the certificate download sits in the same menu as copies of its filings. Two things catch people at payment. The state's own notice says some fee based services may require a credit card or an InforME subscription, so an order placed from an account without one can stall at the last step. And the Bureau's services table prices this certificate by entity family, with a separate and cheaper line for nonprofit corporations, so a price copied off a nonprofit page will not be what an LLC is charged. The expedited service prices on that table are listed as general Bureau services and are not tied by name to certificates, so find out what expedited handling actually buys you on an order the online route already returns at once.

1. 1

   Look the LLC up in the Bureau's corporate search

   Search by entity name or charter number. The record that comes back is the same record the certificate is generated from, so if what you have does not find the LLC, resolve that before you try to buy anything.

2. 2

   Read the filings list and find the most recent annual report

   The search returns an information summary plus a list of the LLC's filings. Confirm the latest annual report appears there. Maine's certificate asserts that it does, which makes this the one line that decides whether the order is worth placing.

3. 3

   File any outstanding report and wait for it to post

   If the report is missing, file it and watch for it to appear on the entity's filing list. The certificate is generated from the record, so it reflects the report only once the record does, not once your payment clears.

4. 4

   Order the certificate from the entity's record

   The download option sits alongside the copy ordering options on the same menu. Have a card ready, and note the state's warning that some fee based services may require a subscription to the portal.

5. 5

   Check the PDF against what was actually asked for

   Read the LLC name and formation date on the certificate before you forward it. Then confirm the requester wanted this document rather than the separate certificate of fact Maine sells, which attests to a specific fact of record and answers a different question.

What Puts You Out of Standing in Maine

Before Maine will issue the Certificate of 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.

31 M.R.S. 1664(1) conditions issuance on what the records filed in the office of the Secretary of State show. No revenue agency step appears in the statute. The fee and penalty recital in paragraph D covers amounts owed to the State that are reflected in the Secretary of State's own records.

The gate is the annual report and it is a hard one. Because the statute has the Secretary of State assert the report is on file, no version of this certificate goes out saying you are behind. An order placed while a report is outstanding does not produce a certificate with a caveat on it; it produces nothing you can send anyone. The cure is ordinary and entirely within your control: file the outstanding report, let it post to the entity's record, then order. Owners winding down should also know that the certificate reports whether a certificate of cancellation has been delivered for filing, so a lender reading it sees a pending cancellation whether or not you raise it.

How Long It Stays Good in Maine

Maine publishes nothing about how long the Certificate of 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 Maine's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

Timing is easy here because the gap between deciding you need one and holding it is a few minutes on the online route. Wait until the counterparty tells you the window it wants, then order inside that window rather than at the start of a deal. The mailed route is the one case worth planning around: Maine publishes an immediate answer for the online download and nothing we could locate for a request sent in on paper, and the multi week processing figure on the Bureau's business services page is stated for corporate filings rather than for certificate orders, so do not budget your closing against it.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, Maine Department of the Secretary of State, Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $10 per document.

Who to Ask in Maine

The Division of Corporations, UCC and Commissions, inside the Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions, runs everything on this page: the entity record, the annual report, and the certificate itself. Its Interactive Corporate Services system is where both the lookup and the order happen, and the Bureau also publishes a fillable credit card payment voucher for requests sent in by mail. The same Bureau runs Maine's authentications and apostilles desk, so a certificate headed overseas stays inside one department from order to legalization. Maine Revenue Services is a separate agency and has no role in issuing this document; call it about a tax account, not about your standing.

Sources

• legislature.maine.gov/statutes/31/title31sec1664.html
• maine.gov/sos/corporations-commissions/incorporating-resources/corporations-commissions/miscellaneous-service-lists-and-bulk-data
• apps3.web.maine.gov/nei-sos-icrs/ICRS
• maine.gov/sos/corporations-commissions/corporations-business-services
• maine.gov/sos/corporations-commissions/i-need-a-business-form/limited-liability-company-forms
• maine.gov/sos/corporations-commissions/authentications-and-apostilles

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