Terms & Disclosures

What Corpus does — and does not do

Corpus provides document-preparation and filing services: business formation (LLC and, where available, nonprofit corporation) in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, registered agent service, and optional EIN (federal tax ID) filing, submitted through our filing partner, Corporate Tools / Registered Agents Inc. Corpus also publishes and makes searchable the text of public laws. Corpus does not provide legal advice, legal representation, tax advice, or accounting advice, and is not a substitute for an attorney.

Not legal advice; Corpus is not a law firm

Corpus is a software platform, not a law firm, and does not provide legal advice or legal representation. Belisarius, our automated assistant, assists with filing preparation and provides general procedural and factual information about business formation and about the text of public laws. It is not a lawyer, and its responses are not a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney about your specific situation. No attorney–client relationship is created by using Corpus. If you need legal advice — for example, about which entity type or state is right for you, tax consequences, or how the law applies to your facts — consult a licensed attorney in your state.

Human review of every filing

Every filing is reviewed by a human before submission to the State. The exact filing payload you approve is cryptographically locked (hashed) at approval time, giving you a tamper-evident record of precisely what was reviewed and approved; your filing is then prepared and submitted to the State on the basis of that approved payload. This review verifies that the filing matches what you entered and that required fields are complete. It is not a legal review — it does not evaluate whether your choices are legally advisable for your situation.

Business formation services

Corpus prepares and submits business-formation filings (such as LLC and nonprofit corporation formations) to the relevant Secretary of State through our filing partner. You review the exact filing details and pay a bundled price before we act. A Corpus administrator then reviews and approves the specific filing before it is submitted to the State. State filing fees are set by each State and are passed through as part of the bundle. Filing times depend on the State and the filing method. We submit within 10 business days of a completed, approved order, and we will tell you before that deadline if we expect to miss it. If we have not submitted by then, you may cancel: you receive a full refund so long as we have not yet begun processing your filing, and otherwise the Refund Policy below governs. State processing time after submission is set by the State, not by us.

If you accepted a specific submission promise at checkout, that promise replaces the 10-business-day period above for your order. Some orders are offered on a founding-customer basis with a named submission period and a discount — for example, “submitted within 14 days of your payment”. Where that happens the period is shown to you in full before payment, you accept it explicitly, and it is recorded on your order. When your payment goes through, that period fixes a specific calendar date, which is shown on your company page. That date is the submission deadline that counts for your order. If we have not submitted by then, you may cancel on exactly the terms above: a full refund so long as we have not yet begun processing your filing, and otherwise as set out in the Refund Policy below. We do not move an accepted date later for any reason.

Registered agent service

Registered agent service is provided through Registered Agents Inc. (“RAI”). The registered agent address may be used for official legal and state correspondence only — it is not a general business mailing address, and it may not be used for USPS mail forwarding. Appointing a registered agent does not remove any prior agent from the State’s records; if you cancel, you are responsible for filing any change or resignation with the State. A pre-signed resignation form is provided in your fulfillment materials.

Renewals and recurring charges

Corpus does not charge you again automatically. There is no subscription, no auto-renewal, and no standing authority to charge a saved payment method for a later period. Your formation bundle is a one-time purchase that includes the first year of registered agent service. Every charge after that happens only because you asked for it.

Registered agent service renews at a flat $99 per year after the included first year, at the rate published at the time you renew. Because nothing renews automatically, your service ends unless you choose to renew it. Ahead of the date we send reminder emails — ordinarily about 60 days, 30 days, and 7 days before, and on the day — and you renew by replying and asking us to. We send the same kind of reminder for state annual reports and similar recurring filings. These reminders are a courtesy containing procedural information and your own dates; they are not legal advice, and they do not create an obligation on us to keep your company in good standing. Verify the exact dates with your Secretary of State.

A registered agent is required to keep your company in good standing in every State that requires one. If you do not renew, the service lapses on its expiry date and you are responsible for appointing a new agent and filing any change with the State. Appointing a registered agent does not remove any prior agent from the State’s records.

We may introduce an optional automatic renewal in the future. If we do, it will be off unless you turn it on, we will tell you the price and the charge date before you turn it on, and you will be able to cancel it at any time from your account without calling or emailing us. We will not convert an existing one-time purchase into a recurring charge. Some payment methods cannot be charged automatically at all; where that applies, renewal will always require a new payment from you.

EIN (federal tax ID)

If you add the optional EIN service, Corpus prepares and submits an application for a federal Employer Identification Number on your behalf using the information you provide, which may include a responsible party’s Social Security Number. That sensitive information is used solely to obtain the EIN and is deleted once the filing is submitted, and in no event kept longer than 7 days. Corpus is not affiliated with the Internal Revenue Service; you may also obtain an EIN directly from the IRS at no cost.

Refund policy

You may request a full refund before we begin processing your filing. Once filing processing begins, refunds are no longer available because work on your formation submission has started. State filing fees are non-refundable after submission (they are paid to the State), and any completed third-party charges are non-refundable; the remaining service margin may be refunded at our discretion only where processing has not begun. EIN filing fees are non-refundable after the application is submitted to the IRS. To request a refund, email support@corpuslaw.us with your order tracking link. Approved refunds are processed within 5 business days to the original payment method.

Payments

Payments are processed by Stripe. Corpus does not store full card numbers. All amounts are in U.S. dollars. Corpus charges only for the services you order and does not hold or transmit third-party funds outside the payment processor.

Data handling

To perform the services, Corpus collects the information you provide in the formation intake: company details, the names and addresses of members, managers, officers, directors, organizers, and incorporators, contact details, and — only if you purchase the EIN service — the responsible party’s Social Security Number. Order data is stored in our database (AWS Aurora PostgreSQL, United States region), reached only over TLS with short-lived identity-based credentials, and retained for as long as needed to service your order and meet legal and accounting obligations. The SSN gets specific handling: it never appears in the human-review snapshot (a masked last-4 is shown instead) and is permanently deleted from our systems as soon as the EIN filing is submitted, and in every case within 7 days of when you provide it — whichever comes first, enforced by an automated nightly deletion job. Filing details are necessarily shared with our filing partner and the relevant State; formation filings generally become public record with the State. We do not sell your personal information.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Corpus’s total liability arising out of or relating to any order is capped at the amount you paid Corpus for that order, and Corpus is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for delays and decisions of any State, the IRS, or other government agency. The services are provided “as is” to the extent permitted by law. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

Changes

We may update these terms; the “last updated” date above reflects the current version. Material changes to an in-flight order’s terms will not apply to that order.

Contact

Questions about these terms or a specific order? Email support@corpuslaw.us.