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You Cannot Move an LLC Out of New Mexico: Here Is the Merger Route

Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: New Mexico does not let a New Mexico LLC convert into another state’s LLC while remaining the same legal entity. NMSA 1978 Chapter 53, Article 19 (the New Mexico Limited Liability Company Act) has no domestication section and no outbound-reaching conversion provision: its ‘conversion’ sections (§§ 53-19-60, 53-19-60.1) only change entity TYPE within New Mexico, not jurisdiction. What works instead is a merger: form a new LLC in the destination state and merge the New Mexico LLC into it under NMSA 1978 § 53-19-62, filing fee $100.

Why the answer is no

The word ‘domesticat’ (in any form: domestication, domesticate, domesticated) does not appear anywhere in the New Mexico LLC Act. Section 53-19-62.A authorizes a New Mexico LLC to ‘be merged with or into one or more limited liability companies, foreign limited liability companies, corporations, foreign corporations, partnerships, foreign partnerships, limited partnerships, foreign limited partnerships or other domestic or foreign entities’: a genuine interstate exit route, but a merger into a resulting entity, not a continuation of the same entity’s own identity the way domestication works elsewhere. Sections 53-19-60 and 53-19-60.1, the Act’s only ‘conversion’ provisions, convert an LLC into a different entity TYPE (corporation, partnership, limited partnership); neither is captioned, defined, or operates as a jurisdiction-only domestication.

The route that does work

The substitute route is merger: form a new LLC in the destination state first, then merge the New Mexico LLC into it under NMSA 1978 § 53-19-62, with Articles of Merger filed with the New Mexico Secretary of State under § 53-19-63.C for a $100 fee. A second, non-domicile-changing option also exists: register the home-state LLC as a foreign LLC doing business in New Mexico (or vice versa) under § 53-19-47, which does not change the entity’s legal home at all. A third option is to simply dissolve in the state of origin and re-form as a new, legally unrelated New Mexico LLC. None of these three is equivalent to true domestication: merger in particular creates a surviving merged entity rather than continuing the original entity’s own EIN-continuity treatment and contract history, and readers should be told this plainly rather than being sold it as a like-for-like substitute.

What is commonly published about New Mexico

Formation-service marketing pages reviewed this session and previously (a Northwest Registered Agent page and a MyUSACorporation ‘domestication’ landing page) that sell New Mexico LLC filing services both correctly state that New Mexico has no domestication statute and point users to foreign qualification or dissolve-and-reform instead; no specific false claim asserting New Mexico permits domestication was found. This is one of the few states on this table where commercial marketing copy already agrees with the statutory reading, so no contradicted-claim callout is warranted beyond noting the search came up empty.

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 leavingWhy there is no route outWhat the code offers instead
Delawarethe statute affirmatively limits it6 Del. C. § 18-209
Kentuckynothing in the code permits itKRS 275.345 to 275.365
Massachusettsthe statute affirmatively limits itMass. Gen. Laws ch. 156C, § 59(b)
Missourinothing in the code permits itMo. Rev. Stat. §§ 347.127 to 347.135
New Mexiconothing in the code permits itNMSA 1978 § 53-19-62
New Yorknothing in the code permits itNY LLC Law § 1001(b), certificate of merger under § 1003
South Carolinathe statute affirmatively limits itS.C. Code Ann. § 33-44-904
Washingtonthe statute affirmatively limits itRCW 25.15.416 to 25.15.431
West Virginianothing in the code permits itW. 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.

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