Series LLC: What It Is and Which States Allow One

The most common use case is a landlord with several rental properties. Instead of forming a separate LLC for each one, and paying that state's formation fee and annual report fee separately every time, the investor puts each property in its own series under one parent LLC. If a tenant sues over an incident at one property, the claim is contained to that property's series; the LLC's other properties, sitting in other series, aren't exposed. The same setup works for a business running several unrelated ventures under one roof, since each product line or location can sit in its own series with its own books and its own members.

Not every state recognizes the structure. As of September 2026, 21 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico allow a series LLC to be formed directly; the table below lists each one with its governing statute. California is the best-known state that doesn't permit formation, and it still taxes each series of an out-of-state series LLC that does business there, so forming one elsewhere doesn't get you out of California's franchise fee.

Two corrections worth flagging plainly, because they show up on other sites' "series LLC states" lists: Wisconsin and Minnesota. Wisconsin's old series provision existed under its pre-2023 LLC statute and was dropped when the state repealed and rewrote its entire LLC Act in 2022. Minnesota's LLC statute, Chapter 322C, has never had a series provision at all. Treat any source that still lists those two as out of date.

A series LLC's core selling point, that each series is legally separate from the others, hasn't been tested by many courts yet. Delaware and Texas have the longest litigation history and the clearest statutory language backing the separation; most other series states have comparatively little case law either way. Keeping the shield intact also takes real bookkeeping discipline: each series generally needs its own bank account and its own records, and contracts need to be signed in that specific series' name, not the parent LLC's. Skip any of that, and a plaintiff's attorney has an opening to argue the series were never really separate to begin with.

Doing business outside your formation state raises a separate question from whether that state lets you form a series LLC in the first place: does it let an out-of-state series LLC register to do business there at all? A handful of states, including Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, have a specific foreign-qualification process for registering an individual series rather than just the parent LLC. Many states have no such process on the books, since their foreign-entity rules were written before series LLCs existed, and that leaves lenders, title companies, and county clerks in some states genuinely unsure how to handle a series showing up on a deed or a loan document.

Forming a series LLC starts the same way as an ordinary LLC: file formation paperwork, usually called articles of organization, naming a registered agent and stating that the LLC intends to operate as a series LLC. After that, each state's process for adding a series diverges. Some states, Delaware among them, let you create additional series just by referencing them in the operating agreement, with no separate state filing or fee. Others, including Illinois, Texas, and Nebraska, require a distinct public filing, often with its own fee, for every series. Check your specific state's requirement before assuming you can add series informally.

For an owner with only two or three properties, several attorneys recommend simply forming a standalone LLC for each one instead of using a series structure. Separate LLCs cost more upfront, since each one carries its own formation fee and its own annual report fee, and they take more paperwork to maintain. But the liability separation between fully independent LLCs has decades of settled law behind it in every state, compared with a structure several courts still haven't ruled on. Whether a series LLC's lower cost is worth the added legal uncertainty is a conversation for a business attorney licensed in your state, not something to settle from a guide like this one.