State Lines
LLC Basics & Law
How LLC law changes state by state: charging orders, veil piercing, and where to form.
01
Your LLC protects less than you think
An LLC stops one kind of claim cold. Four other kinds walk right past it. Most owners find out which is which in a courtroom.
The shield
02
Charging orders: what a creditor can actually take from your LLC
Lose a lawsuit personally and the winner comes looking at your LLC. What they get depends on your state, your ownership, and choices you made years earlier. The complete picture.
03
Piercing the veil: how owners lose their LLC protection
Courts can ignore your LLC and come straight for you. It almost never happens to owners who run the company like a company. Here is what actually triggers it.
04
Single-member LLCs: the weak spot nobody mentions at filing
The one-owner LLC is the most popular entity in America and the most exposed version of the form. The protection was built for partners, and you have none.
05
Series LLCs: one filing, many walls, and almost no court has tested any of them
The series LLC promises ten companies for the price of one. The walls between them rest on law that is young, uneven, and mostly unlitigated. What you are actually buying.
06
Trusts and LLCs: the vault and the key
An LLC protects assets from the business's problems. A trust protects the ownership from yours: death, incapacity, creditors. Most owners need both and confuse the two.
Your state's menu
07
Where your LLC actually lives, and why Wyoming can't save you
The formation state on your paperwork decides less than you were told. The states where you operate decide the rest, and they send bills.
08
Courts: the statute is only as good as the judge who enforces it
Two states can have nearly identical LLC laws and deliver opposite outcomes. The difference is the courtroom, and almost nobody prices it in.
09
PLLCs, L3Cs, and the LLC's other special editions
The standard LLC fits nearly every business. The variants exist because specific gatekeepers refused to accept it. Which one you need, and which ones are mostly branding.
10
Anonymous LLCs: a curtain, not a vault
LLC privacy is real, legal, and useful. It is also the most oversold product in the formation industry. What anonymity actually hides, who it hides you from, and where it opens.
The rules and the exits
11
Freedom of contract: how much of your LLC's rulebook is written in pencil
An LLC is a contract wearing an entity costume. Some states let you rewrite nearly all of it. Others lock the important parts. Which kind of state you are in decides whose promises hold.
12
Default rules: the operating agreement your state wrote for you
Every silence in your operating agreement is answered by a statute you never read. The factory settings decide who votes, who gets paid, and who can sign, and they differ by state.
13
Distributions: the money is not yours until the law says it left
Taking money out of your own LLC feels like a right. It is the single most regulated thing an owner does, and the last checks before a collapse are the first thing a creditor's lawyer reads.
14
Leaving an LLC: three exits, and none work the way you think
Walking out buys less than you assume, courts almost never open the door, and the state can drop you through a trapdoor for a missed form. The law of getting out.