What does a Virginia registered agent do?
A Virginia registered agent, also commonly referred to as a Virginia resident agent, is the official contact point for your company and receives communications on behalf of your business from the Virginia State Corporation Commission and other state agencies. Your registered agent also receives service of process, whether that is a lawsuit involving your company, a garnishment of wages for one of your employees, or a subpoena. The role of the registered agent is to make sure you receive those documents and communications as quickly as possible.
It is very important that your Virginia registered agent is responsible, diligent, knowledgeable, and responsive because your company is deemed to receive anything that has been delivered to your registered agent, whether they forward it to you or not. This means that if you are sued and the lawsuit is served on your registered agent, the court will consider you to have knowledge of the lawsuit and the time to respond starts ticking (in most cases, 21 days from the date of service of process in Virginia). If you don’t know about the lawsuit and don’t respond within the time limits, you won’t get the opportunity to defend yourself and you’re facing a default judgment that can be difficult, if not impossible, to undo. At the very least, it’s going to be an expensive effort, the expense of which far exceeds whatever you may have paid your registered agent for a year of service.
Many of our clients have come to us after experiencing the frustrating and expensive situation of not receiving their documents from their previous registered agent. Sometimes this resulted in them have little or no time to defend a lawsuit. And sometimes this resulted in them losing their authority to transact business in Virginia, risking a deal, a license, or protection from individual liability. In all cases, they have been frustrated by not receiving a service they paid for either because their previous registered agent was located far from Virginia and took a long time to receive and forward documents, or because their resident agent had a whole nation of clients to try to keep track of, or because their registered agent was offering a “free” or very low cost service and simply could not afford to be responsive and diligent. For these reasons, it’s very important to you and your business that you pick a quality Virginia registered agent that will provide the level of service and assistance that you deserve. This is why we are here and why we only focus on providing registered agent service in Virginia – our clients are our number one priority and we do everything possible to protect them.
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