CT Corporation registered agent: addresses, coverage, and what to check on your filings

The CT Corporation registered agent on your Secretary of State record does not use one entity and address. In Delaware the agent of record is The Corporation Trust Company at 1209 Orange Street in Wilmington; in New York, Texas, Florida, and most other states it is C T Corporation System at a state-specific office; in Kansas it is The Corporation Company, Inc. A fund with a Delaware LP, a Delaware GP LLC, a New York management company, and a Texas foreign registration carries two different agent names and three different addresses across its filings.

Those fields do the legal work. Service-of-process rules generally treat delivery to the agent of record as service on your entity. Delaware mails franchise tax notices to the registered agent, and the Texas Secretary of State sends its notices to the registered office or principal place of business on file. If the name or address on a filing lags what the state actually has on record, the papers can stop at the wrong desk while the default judgment or charter forfeiture proceeds anyway.

Which CT Corporation entity and address appears on your record

CT Corporation, a Wolters Kluwer subsidiary, acts through legally distinct affiliates, and the exact affiliate name on each state's record is what a process server and a Secretary of State will use. State law imposes an agent requirement in each state of formation and each state of foreign qualification, and states generally impose a good-standing requirement before granting that qualification; confirm the specifics with counsel or the relevant SOS.

Legal entity names by state

Four affiliate names appear on state and federal records:

• Delaware: The Corporation Trust Company

• Maryland: The Corporation Trust Incorporated

• Kansas: The Corporation Company, Inc.

• Most other states: C T Corporation System

The Corporation Trust Company and C T Corporation System both show up in Delaware LLC filings at the same 1209 Orange Street address. They are separate legal entities, so a Delaware entity record that reads "C T Corporation System" is not interchangeable with one that reads "The Corporation Trust Company."

Agent names and addresses on record

Each address below comes from the state or federal record identified in the last column; the Illinois entry comes from a federal filing rather than an Illinois SOS record.

The Glendale office address, 330 N Brand Blvd., Suite 700, Glendale, CA 91203, and the Illinois address come from supplementary federal lists and SEC exhibits, so pull your own record in bizfile Online or the Illinois SOS business search before copying either onto a filing.

Statutory rules the agent designation has to satisfy

If your agent represents more than 50 Delaware entities, it has to keep a staffed Delaware office, and Texas and California each impose their own address rules on the agent you designate.

Delaware commercial agent qualifications

Under Delaware's § 132(c), § 18-104(f), and § 17-104(f), any agent serving more than 50 entities must have a Delaware business office generally open during normal business hours. The agent also has to hold a Delaware business license and keep an officer, director, or managing agent present during those hours under the Delaware staffing requirement. As enacted and effective on August 1, 2025, Senate Bill 95 bars agents from performing those duties solely through a virtual office or mail forwarding service. The obligation runs both ways: Delaware requires each entity to give its agent the name, business address, and telephone number of a natural person authorized to receive communications (2006 amendments).

Texas and California address rules

Texas BOC § 5.201 requires a registered office that is a street address where process can be personally served, expressly not a mailbox or telephone answering service, with an employee available during normal business hours. A filing entity cannot act as its own agent. California works differently: a corporate agent must first file a certificate under § 1505 listing the street address of each California office and the authorized person at each. Once that certificate is on file, an LLC designating a corporate agent lists only the agent's name under § 17701.13; no address appears on the LLC's filing at all.

What to verify on each filing

Match the agent name and address, character for character, to the state's current record, because Texas, California, and New York forms ask for what the Secretary of State already shows, not what your engagement letter says.

Name and address fields by state

Each state puts the agent data in a different place:

• Texas Form 401 Items 1 through 3 require the entity name, the agent name, and the office address "as currently shown on the records of the secretary of state." The SOS sends the notices described in its guidance to the registered office or principal place of business on its own records.

• Florida requires the agent name and a Florida street address on the annual report; a P.O. box is not acceptable.

• California Form SI-550 accepts either an individual or a registered corporate agent, never both, and a corporate agent needs a current § 1505 certificate on file. The California SOS lists failure to file a California Statement of Information as the most common cause of suspension or forfeiture.

• New York statutory-agent law makes the Secretary of State the statutory agent. The service-of-process address cannot be changed on a Biennial Statement; it takes a Certificate of Change, on which the entity name and incorporation date must exactly match DOS records, so confirm the change was recorded by Certificate of Change, not by the biennial statement.

• Delaware's annual report has no field for verifying or updating the agent's name or address, so pull your entity record from the ICIS name search, which shows agent name, address, phone, and residency free of charge and returns both active and inactive entities.

Confirm each field against the state record before the filing window opens, not after.

Consent and signature rules

Florida requires a newly designated agent to sign the annual report by typing its name, and typing that signature without permission is forgery under § 831.06, according to the Florida signature instructions. If enacted and effective as proposed on July 1, 2025, Colorado's HB 24-1137 would require agent consent and a physical Colorado street address customarily open during business hours; U.S. and commercial post office boxes would be excluded from a usual place of business.

Delaware tax notices route through the agent

Delaware says it prints annual tax notices in December and routes them through the registered agent. For LLCs and LPs, § 18-1107(d) and § 17-1109(c) require the notice to reach the agent at least 60 days before June 1, and § 18-104(d) makes forwarding that statement an agent duty. Confirm the June 1 date against current Delaware instructions each year.

The statute and the tax instructions page set the annual tax at $400, while several other official Delaware pages, including the annual report page, still say $300; confirm the amount with the Division before paying. For Delaware LLCs, late payment adds a $200 penalty plus 1.5% interest per month.0 Corporate annual reports are due March 1 with a $50 filing fee; confirm both the date and fee against current Delaware instructions each year. The principal address on that report cannot be the agent's address.

What happens when the agent record is wrong or lapses

States can cancel or forfeit entities that fail to keep an agent on record under agent-maintenance rules, and courts hold the entity, not the agent, responsible when served papers never arrive under forwarding-failure analysis.

Statutory consequences by state

If your Delaware LLC's agent resigns and you name no replacement within 30 days, the certificate of formation is canceled under § 18-104(d), and an LP's certificate goes on the same 30-day clock under § 17-104(d). Delaware § 136 makes an agent's resignation effective 30 days after filing; if a corporation names no replacement within 30 days, the Secretary of State declares the charter forfeited, and a foreign corporation gets only 10 days before foreign corporation forfeiture. ICIS then displays the status "Cancelled, Failure to Appoint a R/A." (ICIS status codes). Texas may terminate a domestic entity or revoke a foreign registration for failing to maintain an agent (terminations FAQ); reinstatement on Form 811 costs $75 plus a Comptroller tax clearance letter.

Default judgments from forwarding failures

The law review article Notice Risk and Registered Agency puts the exposure plainly: "The most obvious point of failure to the registered-agency system is that an agent might accept service but fail to forward the papers to the defendant. This negligence, in turn, is imputed to the defendant" (law review analysis). In a 2024 Eastern District of Missouri case, CT Corporation System received a summons and complaint on February 12, 2024, and the defendant did not learn of the suit until April 9, 2024, when CT Corp. forwarded the entry of default. A $309,926 default judgment was entered against a Maryland corporation that went eight years without a North Carolina agent (NC benchbook).

Fees to change or correct the registered agent

Filing the change with the state costs $15 to $50 for entity-filed changes in the five states below. Delaware lets a registered agent update the registered office address for all corporations it represents in a single filing, but Texas requires each entity to file its own registered-agent or registered-office change; Texas provides bulk-update instructions.

Change-of-agent fees by state

The fee depends on entity type and on whether you or the agent files the change:

Bulk changes for multi-entity structures

Under Delaware's official fee schedule, an agent-initiated Blanket Certificate costs $169 plus $2 per entity, and Texas Form 408 charges $15 per entity with a $750 cap per entity type group when more than 50 entities are affected. The $25 California corporation figure comes from the CA SOS FAQ; the schedule linked above is dated June 2018.

Consolidate registered agent coverage and filing checks with Discern

Keeping a CT Corporation designation accurate means tracking a different affiliate name and office in each state. Registered agent services can help organizations receive and manage official documents.

For a fund running a Delaware LP, a GP LLC, a management company, and foreign registrations in several states, one platform holds every agent name, address, and filing deadline. Registered agent consolidation can help simplify multi-state compliance management.

Book a demo with Discern to see your registered agent records and state filings in one place.

Frequently asked questions about CT Corporation registered agents

These answers summarize the filing checks and registered-agent distinctions covered above.

Which CT Corporation name should appear on my filing?

Use the exact affiliate name shown on the current state record. The Corporation Trust Company commonly appears in Delaware, The Corporation Trust Incorporated in Maryland, The Corporation Company, Inc. in Kansas, and C T Corporation System in most other states.

How do I verify CT Corporation's registered-office address?

Pull the entity's current Secretary of State record before filing. Do not assume that an address from an engagement letter, federal list, SEC exhibit, or another state's filing matches the office currently recorded by the relevant state.

Can I update a registered-agent address on an annual report?

The available filing depends on the state. Florida permits a newly designated agent on its annual report, New York requires a Certificate of Change for the service-of-process address, and Delaware's annual report does not provide a field for updating the agent's name or address.

What happens if the registered-agent record is wrong?

Service delivered to the agent of record can still count as service on the entity. A forwarding failure can therefore lead to a default judgment, while failure to maintain an agent can trigger cancellation, charter forfeiture, termination, or revocation under the applicable entity-type rules.

How should I track CT Corporation across multiple states?

Keep the exact agent name, state-specific office, filing deadline, and current state-record status for each entity and jurisdiction. Multi-state structures can carry different CT Corporation affiliate names and addresses across their filings.