How to Reinstate an LLC in Maine: Six Years to Come Back, Three to Keep the Name

Updated August 24, 2026. Quick answer: Maine administratively dissolves an LLC for missed fees, an unfiled annual report, an unpaid late penalty, or the lack of a registered agent, after notice and a 60-day cure window. From there, 31 M.R.S. § 1593 gives 6 years to apply for reinstatement, and reinstatement relates back as if the dissolution never happened. The catch is that the company’s name is only protected in the Secretary of State’s records for 3 years under § 1592(6), half the reinstatement window. A company can be entirely within its legal right to reinstate in year 5 and still find its own name already taken. The reinstatement fee itself is capped at $600 for annual-report failures, however many years are delinquent.

What gets a Maine LLC administratively dissolved

Maine’s administrative-dissolution regime is a two-track system similar in shape to several other Uniform Act states: a list of grounds, a notice-and-cure procedure, and then a separate reinstatement section with its own deadline. The grounds are listed in one section, and a missed annual report is the most common of the six:

“The limited liability company does not deliver its annual report to the Secretary of State as required by section 1665 ;”

31 M.R.S. § 1591(2)

The Secretary of State must serve written notice of the grounds first; dissolution follows only if the company fails to correct the problem within 60 days of that notice. Once dissolved, the company doesn’t disappear; it just can’t operate:

“A limited liability company administratively dissolved continues its existence but may not transact any business in this State except as necessary to wind up the affairs of the limited liability company.”

31 M.R.S. § 1592(3)

Dissolution also doesn’t touch contracts already signed, doesn’t strip the company’s right to defend a lawsuit, and doesn’t end the authority of its registered agent. None of that changes what dissolution actually stops the company from doing going forward: transacting new business in Maine, outside of what winding up requires.

Six years to apply

The reinstatement deadline is generous compared to most states that run this kind of two-track system:

“A limited liability company administratively dissolved under section 1592 may apply to the Secretary of State for reinstatement within 6 years after the effective date of administrative dissolution.”

31 M.R.S. § 1593(1)

Miss it entirely and the consequence is automatic and specific: not a vague loss of rights, but a scheduled cancellation:

“In the event a limited liability company that is administratively dissolved under section 1592 fails to be reinstated in accordance with the terms of this section within 6 years after the effective date of administrative dissolution, the Secretary of State shall cancel the certificate of formation of the limited liability company, effective on the 6th anniversary of the effective date of administrative dissolution.”

31 M.R.S. § 1593(4)

The application itself is short: the company’s name, the effective date of its administrative dissolution, a statement that the ground for dissolution either never existed or has since been eliminated, and a statement that the name currently satisfies § 1508’s requirements. If the Secretary of State finds the application complete, accurate, and accompanied by the fee, the dissolution is cancelled and reinstatement takes effect: there is no separate hearing or waiting period described in the sections read beyond the agency’s own processing.

The trap: your name doesn’t get the same six years

Buried in the procedure section, not the reinstatement section, is the number that actually controls whether reinstating gets you your old company back or a company with a new name:

“The name of a limited liability company remains in the office of the Secretary of State’s record of limited liability company names and is protected for a period of 3 years following administrative dissolution.”

31 M.R.S. § 1592(6)

Nothing in § 1593 ties the reinstatement deadline to the name-protection period, and nothing bars reinstatement once the name is gone: the application just has to state that the company’s name “satisfies the requirements of section 1508” at the time it’s filed, which for a company past year 3 may mean a different name than the one on the original certificate. A reader who reinstates in year 2 gets their name back automatically. A reader who reinstates in year 5 is fully entitled to reinstate under the statute, but has to check, and possibly amend around, whatever happened to their name in the intervening two years.

This is structurally the same trap the earlier sibling page on Ohio describes, two clocks starting on the same day, running different lengths, but Maine’s own numbers are its own: six years to reinstate against three to keep the name, a wider gap in both directions than Ohio’s two-against-one. A business that assumes the 6-year figure is the only number that matters is the business most likely to discover, mid-filing, that its own name now belongs to someone else.

What it costs

The reinstatement fee schedule is set per ground, and the annual-report ground has an unusual cap:

“For failure to file an annual report, a fee of $150, to a maximum fee of $600, regardless of the number of delinquent reports or the period of delinquency;”

31 M.R.S. § 1680(17)

A company five years behind on annual reports pays the same $600 ceiling as a company one year behind; the fee scales with the ground for dissolution, not with how long the company waited to fix it. The other four grounds, late-filing penalty, no registered agent, failure to update the registered agent, and filing false information, each carry their own flat $150 fee if applicable.

That structure means the $600 ceiling only caps the annual-report ground specifically. A company dissolved for both a missing annual report and an unmaintained registered agent, for instance, would be looking at fees tied to each applicable ground stated in § 1680(17), not a single blended number: the statute prices each ground separately rather than charging one flat reinstatement fee regardless of cause.

A second, narrower mechanism: revival

Reinstatement under § 1593 is not the only way back into existence in this subchapter. A separate section allows the Secretary of State to grant something called revival, on request:

“If the Secretary of State finds that a limited liability company has dissolved in any manner under this chapter, that the certificate of formation for that limited liability company has been cancelled pursuant to section 1533 and that the limited liability company should be revived for any specified purpose or purposes for a specific period of time, the Secretary of State may upon application by an interested party accompanied by the payment of the fee required by section 1680 file a certificate of revival in a form or format prescribed by the Secretary of State for reviving the limited liability company.”

31 M.R.S. § 1604(1)

Revival under § 1604 is deliberately narrower than reinstatement: the Secretary of State grants it “for any specified purpose or purposes for a specific period of time,” and the application itself has to state that purpose and the time period needed to complete it. This is the tool for a company whose certificate has already been cancelled, whether by running out the 6-year reinstatement window or otherwise, and that needs to exist again briefly for one task, such as signing a document or defending a claim, not a route back to ongoing operation.

The certificate of revival under § 1604 has to name the company before and after revival, its original formation date, the cancellation date if known, its prior registered agent (or a newly appointed one, if the old one resigned or can’t be found), who is requesting the revival, and both the purpose and the time period needed. That level of specificity is the tell: this section is built for a one-time, bounded need, not for putting a company back into ongoing business. A reader whose only goal is to resume normal operations should be looking at § 1593 reinstatement, within its 6-year window, rather than at revival.

If reinstatement is denied

If the Secretary of State denies an application for reinstatement, § 1594 requires written notice explaining the reason, and the company may appeal to the Superior Court of the county where its principal office is located, or Kennebec County, if it has none in Maine, within 30 days of the denial notice. The appeal is a petition asking the court to set aside the dissolution, with the Secretary of State’s notices and the company’s application attached. The court can summarily order reinstatement or take other action it considers appropriate, and its decision can itself be appealed as in any other civil case.

This appeal route matters most when a denial turns on a factual dispute, whether the ground for dissolution actually existed, or whether it was actually fixed, rather than on the 6-year deadline itself, which the statute does not describe as subject to discretionary extension.

What this page does not do

• It does not state the Secretary of State’s current reinstatement form number or any agency processing timeline. because the Bureau of Corporations’ own filing pages were not fetched and read this session; all fee and deadline figures come from the statute.
• It does not resolve what standard the Secretary of State applies in deciding to grant a § 1604 revival, or how long a typical revival period runs. because the sections read state only that revival is purpose- and time-bound, not the criteria used to grant it.
• It is not legal advice.

Related: what a Maine LLC costs to keep, how to dissolve a Maine LLC on purpose, and what happens when you stop filing annual reports. Other states in this series: Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Sources

Every statement of law on this page is quoted from the text below, as read on August 24, 2026. Each row links the document it was read from.

General consumer information, not financial, tax or legal advice. State rules are as published by the cited source on 2026-08-24 and change; your own facts govern, and a reinstatement question with money on it is one to put to a lawyer or accountant in that state.