Planting Space

I just finished filing Articles of Incorporation for a new church in California. I was told that if I mailed the forms in, it would take up to 3 months to receive them back. I opted to walk them into the Capitol and pay a small processing fee ($15 in CA). I had the Articles approved and certified in about an hour.

If you’re filing legal documents like your Articles of Incorporation, always check first to see if you can file the form online. If not, find out where to walk it in somewhere in your state. Even in this day and age, there are some forms that need original signatures and have to be submitted on good, old-fashioned wood pulp. Either way, you should be able to shave weeks, if not months, off of your waiting time.

Here’s another great reason to file in person the forms you can’t submit online: imagine you’ve made an error by typo or omission and you mailed the forms in. Three months later you get back a request for clarification or an outright rejection. You won’t be able to recover that lost time. In person, even if the form is rejected, at least you can start addressing the correction immediately. Time is money.

Have any of you readers had experience with processing times in other states? How long does it take?

featured on newchurches.com

Tags: No Comments