Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: Delaware does not let a Delaware LLC domesticate, transfer, or continue into another US state while remaining the same legal entity. 6 Del. C. § 18-213, the provision captioned ‘Transfer or continuance of domestic limited liability companies,’ looks at first glance like Delaware’s outbound domestication statute, but its own text confines the route to ‘any jurisdiction, other than any state’: meaning any foreign country, not another US state. There is no separate Delaware LLC Act provision that reaches an outbound move to another state at all. What works instead is a merger: form a new LLC in the destination state and merge the Delaware LLC into it under 6 Del. C. § 18-209.
Why the answer is no
Section 18-213(a) states: ‘Upon compliance with this section, any limited liability company may transfer to or domesticate or continue in any jurisdiction, other than any state, and, in connection therewith, may elect to continue its existence as a limited liability company in the State of Delaware.’ The phrase ‘other than any state’ is the entire ballgame: it excludes every other US state from this section’s reach, leaving it usable only for a move to a foreign country. This is a narrower, less-publicized finding than the well-known mix-up with § 18-212 (captioned ‘Domestication of non-United States entities,’ which by its own definition of ‘non-United States entity’ excludes any entity ‘formed under the laws of a state,’ so it was never the right citation for a US-state move either). Reading the whole of Subchapter II (§§ 18-201 through 18-221) confirms § 18-213 is the only outbound-domestication-shaped provision in the chapter, and it excludes US states by its own express terms: Delaware’s LLC Act simply has no statutory outbound-domestication route to another US state.
The route that does work
The substitute is a merger into a newly formed LLC in the destination state. 6 Del. C. § 18-209(a) defines ‘other business entity’ broadly enough to include an entity ‘formed or organized under the laws of… any other state,’ and merger, unlike § 18-213’s transfer-or-continuance route, is not restricted to non-US jurisdictions. Practically: form the destination-state LLC first, then file a Certificate of Merger under § 18-209 merging the Delaware LLC with and into the new out-of-state LLC, with the destination-state LLC surviving. This is not a continuation of the same legal entity (a new entity is formed and the old one is merged out of existence), which is exactly the distinction that makes it a workaround rather than a true domestication. Delaware’s Division of Corporations fee schedule (revised August 1, 2026) prices this Certificate of Merger at $220, separate from and not to be confused with the $220 ‘Transfer or Continuance of Domestic LLC’ line, which is the § 18-213 fee for the non-US-jurisdiction route this page is about the absence of.
What is commonly published about Delaware
That 6 Del. C. § 18-212 is Delaware’s LLC domestication statute governing a move to or from another US state.
Section 18-212 is captioned ‘Domestication of non-United States entities,’ and its own definition of ‘non-United States entity’ expressly excludes any entity ‘formed under the laws of a state.’ It does not reach any other-US-state LLC at all, inbound or outbound. A second, less commonly flagged error: even sources that avoid the § 18-212 mix-up often assume Delaware has an outbound domestication statute mirroring its inbound conversion statute (§ 18-214); it does not. Section 18-213 restricts itself to non-US jurisdictions by its own express text, so the only outbound route to another state is merger under § 18-209.
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 move-to-another-state guide, which covers Delaware’s route directly. 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.
- Delaware: https://delcode.delaware.gov/title6/c018/sc02/index.html. Statutory text, independently re-verified 2026-09-03 against delcode.delaware.gov, reading §§ 18-213(a), 18-209(a), and confirming § 18-214’s presence in the same subchapter; matches dataset..