Companies and BusinessHow to Remove a Member From an LLC?

How to remove a member from an LLC? This article is ensuring the lawful procedure for expelling a member as well as protection of your reservations.

In order to qualify the criteria which may ensure the procedure lawful, then you must have to follow the following steps for removing a member from an LLC.

1. Checking out the operating agreement of the LLC that provides the procedure for withdrawal of any member.
2. Arrangement and calling the voting procedure into an action.
3. If the operating agreement provides a mandatory condition for service of notice to the removing member then it must be complied with.
4. If there’s no procedure left for self removal, then you may approach the court of law.

However, I’m going to explain these steps in detail.

But first you have to understand this.

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Let’s start.

Picture of three areas of business law are:

1. The estate planning portion of it for the family 
2. The asset protection portion of it for the business itself and 
3. The employment law aspect of it for businesses that have to take on employees 

That’s what I try to provide and that’s what I take pleasure in providing I do it for free. 

You can take advantage of the information and apply it to your particular circumstances. 

You know we’ve talked about LLC’s many times and some of the questions that I’ve been getting recently are I’ve got some problems with in the LLC.

How to remove a member from an LLC?

I have gone through the entire process because I had a somewhat ambiguous arrangement which is an agreement that was in place that really wasn’t very specific. 

I had to work through a number of things. 

So I thought I’d provide and I don’t know maybe easy steps. 

What you can do if you have an LLC? 

How can you manage to remove a member from  LLC if it’s a problem for the rest of the members?

I’m talking about a multi-member LLC.

Obviously if your single-member LLC this doesn’t really come into play. 

The best way to start would be from the beginning determine if there’s a procedure for involuntarily withdrawing members that’s within the articles of organization or the operating agreement. 

So here’s what I mean by that when you file for your LLC you have to file articles of organization. 

I don’t place in those articles membership withdrawal because that I address in the articles of organization the operating agreement which is more detailed but you can if you choose to do. 

So I think it’s somewhat awkward because I’m a big proponent of operating agreements as a separate vehicle to spell out these things because you’re going to need to spell out a lot of other things you might as well do it in separate agreement. 

We have an operating agreement you want your articles of organization to be compact and the more information you put in there the more tedious it becomes in my humble opinion. 

So remember an operating agreement is a written contract that sets forth procedures to govern the LLC. 

So obviously this is a place where you can address many issues and one of the issues that you’re going to address is if we’ve got a problem and we need to get rid of or fire essentially an LLC member then how do we do it? 

1. The first step you want to do is look to the operating agreement. 
2. The second step would be to utilize the voting procedure contained in the articles of organization.

The operating agreement which I prefer because if there’s a procedure for forcing LLC members to withdraw this procedure can be followed. 

Otherwise you have to resort to court action. So,

1. Place the withdrawal methods in the operating agreement.
2. Follow whatever procedure or voting procedure you have to vote out a member.
3. If you don’t have this then you’re gonna have to go to court because you’re gonna have a problem on your hands. 

Now good practical operating procedure when you do write up the agreement LLC or the corporation that you have these procedures in place in the operating agreement. 

But, 

Why would a good business attorney not do it?

Because a good business attorney would do it. 

The question is,

Why would somebody go online and set these things up and pay less money and not have an attorney’s advice and then of course not have an operating agreement? 

That’s the real question and of course I have many people out there and I don’t want to insult 

Why do they do-it-yourself? 

There are plenty of people out there who realize what they need and what they want to do but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the advice of counsel. 

It just means that there’s some good people out there and there’re the ones that are so good and if they try to shortcut there may not be the proper allocation of space and within the operating agreement to address these withdrawal issues. 

Now I guess your original question. 

There could be some attorneys out there who fail to include this. 

And I think that’s very egregious but they’re not good business attorneys. 

They’re probably not top lawyers if they’re gonna leave this kind of stuff out and you know that that brings up another point which I was gonna mention and that would be,

Why don’t you submit an offer to have this member resign? 

You can do that whether you have provisions in the operating agreement for withdrawal. 

Or even if you don’t have but the one critical thing you must remember when you do that or when you make an offer to have them resign voluntarily or where you vote them out under any circumstances that person is entitled to a share of the profits that represent his asset value within the LLC. 

You can’t just vote somebody out without settling up with that person he or her has to be offered their fair value share. 

Their fair share, I mean. 

So, 

What typically would happen that would if you don’t have this in your agreement? 

Perhaps if you do and you want to short cut any formal kind of action.

For example here I’m going to offer a buyout to you and what I’m going to do is I’m going to pay you your fair share in order to allow this to be a voluntary process. 

In other words, rather than voting out or firing you I’m going to allow you to resign and you know that makes it may be less or more palatable. 

I should say for certain members of LLC’s depending on, 

What was the nature of your relationship?

Remember under any circumstance you’re gonna have to pay this individual his financial share. 

The final way to do this is touched upon earlier is to petition the court for judicial district dissolution of the LLC. 

If a member is unwilling to withdraw and it’s become impossible to deal with because you may not have this provision in your operating agreement to vote him out. 

But even if you do, he may start causing problems and refuse to leave. 

Then you’re gonna have to petition the court. 

But more often than not the petition for the court that comes into play is where you don’t have the proper provisions and your operating agreement to vote somebody out. 

They don’t want to take a voluntary resignation, you have procedures in the operating agreement to vote. 

Now those two things have failed, you need to go petition the court. 

You must remember that oftentimes the court may say hey we’re going to dissolve this LLC and wind it up. 

That means we’re going to pay everybody what they’re doing in the LLC. 

Now the remaining members who still want to do business together, most often,not have to then form a new LLC and continue to conduct business under a new name or a variety of you know a certain using a similar name or whatever it might be that’s available. 

But the point you must remember here is not to make any new contracts with any client or to bear when you’re in the midst of trying to settle this issue with the existing LLC member. 

Most especially if you’re in the middle of a court battle to dissolve the LLC you don’t want to create any new liabilities or anything like that on your behalf when things are up in the air. 

So that’s essentially the way it needs to be handled. 

Remember that the ability to fire a member of an LLC depends on the operating agreement. 

It should provide a procedure in which to do. 

So instead an operating agreement may allow a member to be involuntary or involuntarily removed only if another member buys out his interests in the business. 

And that’s the combination here the operating agreement allows for the procedure that’s what you want optimally and then you want to have to remember to pay this member his fair share. 

Now one quick note in cases of misconduct, you may be able to seek assistance from the court removing a member of an LLC. 

But generally only courts will interfere in situations where there’s been a willful violation of an operating agreement and the member refuses to leave or you don’t have an operating agreement that provides for withdrawal and then a court must get involved in those two circumstances. 

And the idea is here that courts don’t want to interfere in LLC businesses or S Corporation business. 

They don’t want to do that unless they’re forced to. 

So they urge you as long as within the bounds of the statutes. 

You can create an operating agreement for your company that is very liberal in the sense that you can insert just about anything you need to put in there. 

As long as it’s within the bounds of the law courts don’t want to get involved unless they absolutely have to. 

So I hope that’s kind of made clear or driven home the point that an operating agreement is just so critical when you have a multi  member LLC. 

Well this is great information as to what we talked about.

I might add, 

For example as a single member LLC, it’s not absolutely critical in this situation to have an operating agreement. 

But it might be critical to have because it not only wants to be very strict and follow the procedure and make it very clear to anybody who challenges that LLC that he has a formal entity and that his corporate shield uses the word corporate. 

His LLC shield cannot be penetrated and should he decide to take on people in the future as additional members to the LLC that operating agreements completed. 

So it benefits any future situation that he might want to encounter with new individuals.

So again think about these things when you’re running a business. 

You want to make sure you’re doing it right. 

You want to make sure you have these proper ingredients so you can move forward. 

So you can take care of your business while you’re conducting your business and whatever profession service or product oriented profession that you’re involved in. 

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