Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: Kentucky has no domestication or conversion route that lets a Kentucky LLC become another state’s LLC while staying the same legal entity: there is no such section anywhere in KRS Chapter 275. The substitute is merger: form the destination-state LLC and merge the Kentucky one into it under KRS 275.345 to 275.365, with the new entity as survivor. You don’t have to dissolve, but you also don’t keep the original entity’s formation date.
Why the answer is no
The complete KRS Chapter 275 table of contents (all 81 sections, current through the 2026 Regular Session) was read and searched for ‘domesticat’, ‘redomestic’, ‘transfer of domicile’, ‘continuance’, and ‘another jurisdiction’ used as a jurisdiction-change trigger: none found. The chapter’s only jurisdiction-adjacent provisions are entity-TYPE conversion (§§ 275.370-.377: partnership/limited partnership to LLC, corporation/foreign corporation to LLC: never LLC-to-LLC, and never a same-type jurisdiction change), routine foreign-LLC registration to transact business (§§ 275.380/.385/.415), and merger (§§ 275.345-.365). No section anywhere lets a Kentucky LLC become an LLC of another state while remaining the same continuous entity. This is a confirmed absence over a corpus read in full: reinforced by an independent check of Kentucky’s general Business Entity Filing Act (KRS Ch. 14A) and the Secretary of State’s complete forms library, neither of which contains a conversion or domestication filing for any entity type.
The route that does work
KRS 275.345 (‘Right of company to merge with other business entities’) through 275.365 (‘Effect of merger’) is the functional substitute. KRS 275.015(2) defines ‘business entity’ to include ‘a domestic OR FOREIGN limited liability company,’ so a Kentucky LLC may merge with or into an out-of-state LLC, with either as the survivor. Independently reconfirmed this session by direct fetch of the official chapter index at apps.legislature.ky.gov: § 275.345 is titled ‘Right of company to merge with other business entities; Exception; No right of dissent,’ confirming .345, not .350 (‘Approval of proposed merger,’ a distinct, later procedural section), is the correct starting citation. This is not a jurisdiction-preserving conversion: the survivor is a newly formed entity, and rights, contracts, and liabilities pass by operation of law (§ 275.365) rather than the original entity simply changing its governing state.
What is commonly published about Kentucky
Formation-service marketing pages advertise a named ‘Kentucky domestication’ filing procedure with no statutory citation. No such Kentucky Secretary of State filing exists; the real route is the merger substitute above, or foreign qualification without dissolving.
Check both ends of the move, not just the destination
A move needs two things to be true: your destination has to let the entity in, and your current state has to let it out. Nine states have no statutory route out, so an LLC formed in one of them cannot domesticate anywhere, however welcoming the destination is. That is where most published advice goes wrong; it checks one end.
| State you would be leaving | Why there is no route out | What the code offers instead |
|---|---|---|
| Delaware | the statute affirmatively limits it | 6 Del. C. § 18-209 |
| Kentucky | nothing in the code permits it | KRS 275.345 to 275.365 |
| Massachusetts | the statute affirmatively limits it | Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 156C, § 59(b) |
| Missouri | nothing in the code permits it | Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 347.127 to 347.135 |
| New Mexico | nothing in the code permits it | NMSA 1978 § 53-19-62 |
| New York | nothing in the code permits it | NY LLC Law § 1001(b), certificate of merger under § 1003 |
| South Carolina | the statute affirmatively limits it | S.C. Code Ann. § 33-44-904 |
| Washington | the statute affirmatively limits it | RCW 25.15.416 to 25.15.431 |
| West Virginia | nothing in the code permits it | W. Va. Code § 31B-9-904, articles of merger under § 31B-9-905 |
Delaware is the surprise on that list and it is not a mistake; see the Delaware page. For the other eight, the substitute is a merger, not a dissolution: form the new entity in the destination state and merge the old one into it. Merger produces a surviving entity rather than a continuation, so it is genuinely not the same thing as domestication, but it keeps far more alive than dissolving does.
This page sells nothing and links to no filing service. Moving an LLC is a filing-desk task with a statutory answer, and the answer is either in your two states’ codes or it is not.
The full 51-jurisdiction table is on the domestication states list.
Sources
Every row on this page is statutory text. No formation service, no registered-agent marketing page and no aggregator is cited anywhere in this cluster; those are the only publishers of the competing versions.
- Kentucky: https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/chapter.aspx?id=38578. Statutory text, Dataset retrieved 2026-08-12 from the official chapter index at apps.legislature.ky.gov (id=38578)..