No matter the time, we're here for you. Reach out 24/7!2900 Woodridge Drive, Suite 210, Houston, TX 77087
Home/Practice Areas/Business & Civil Litigation/Business formation
Filing the entity takes an afternoon. The documents that decide what happens when the owners stop agreeing are the reason to involve a lawyer.
Business & Civil Litigation
Anyone can file a certificate of formation with the Texas Secretary of State. What that filing does not do is decide who can bind the company, how profits are split, what happens when one owner wants out or stops working, or how the business is valued if someone dies or divorces. Those questions get answered either in a governing document written while everyone is friendly, or in litigation later.
The default choice for most Texas businesses: liability protection, flexible management and pass-through taxation, governed by a company agreement.
For businesses raising outside investment or issuing stock, with a board, bylaws and formalities that have to be observed to mean anything.
General and limited partnerships, including the general partnership you may have formed by accident simply by going into business with someone.
A Texas structure that isolates assets in separate series — useful for real estate holdings, and unforgiving if the series are not maintained separately.
The protection an entity provides is lost by behaving as though it does not exist: paying personal expenses from the business account, undercapitalising it, signing contracts personally instead of as an officer, and ignoring the formalities in the governing documents. Those are the facts a plaintiff's lawyer uses to reach an owner personally, and avoiding them costs nothing.
Who contributes what, who decides, how profits are split, and how a partner exits.
Read more →The company agreement that governs a Texas LLC — the document nobody reads until it matters.
Read more →Scope, payment, ownership of the work product and the independent contractor classification behind it.
Read more →Reviewing the FDD and the agreement before you sign the ten-year commitment behind the brand.
Read more →For most Texas businesses an LLC, because of liability protection and flexibility. Corporations suit businesses raising outside investment.
You can. What a filing service will not give you is the governing document that decides what happens when the owners disagree.
It depends on your exposure. If the work can injure someone or generate a contract dispute, the separation is worth having before something happens.
Not treating the company as your wallet: separate accounts, adequate capital, signing as an officer, and following the formalities in your own documents.
The person or company designated to receive legal notices for the entity. Using a reliable one is how businesses avoid default judgments they never saw coming.
A Texas structure isolating assets in separate series, useful for real estate holdings and unforgiving if the series are not genuinely kept separate.
Then default rules govern, and they may not resemble what you both believe you agreed. It is fixable now and not fixable once there is a dispute.
The terms deciding what happens on an owner's death, disability, divorce or exit, and how the interest is valued — agreed before anyone has an interest in the answer.
If you trade under a name other than the entity's legal name, yes. It is a small filing that avoids awkward problems with banks and contracts.
The entity, a governing agreement, an EIN, the right registrations, and the contract templates the business will actually use with customers.
Free Consultation
Available 24/7 · Office hours Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
