2003 Delaware Changes
Corporation/Limited Partnership
Limited Liability Company
General Partnership/Statutory Trust
(effective April 14, 2003)

APRIL, 2003

File Dates & File Times
All documents will be filed as of the date and time received by the Secretary of State's office, except in cases of extraordinary condition. Our office will make every attempt to deliver documents promptly upon receipt. Future effective dates and times may be specified in corporate documents, and we encourage use of this option whenever possible. Prior arrangements should be made whenever a specific file time is required.

If an extraordinary condition prevents the successful delivery of a corporate document to the State of Delaware for filing, the filer may submit the document within two business days, attaching an Affidavit of Extraordinary Condition, setting forth the date and time when the attempt to deliver the document was made and why the attempt was unsuccessful. If approved, the document will be filed as of the date and time of the unsuccessful delivery. If an extraordinary condition causes the State of Delaware to be to be unable to receive documents for filing, the Secretary of State may issue a written waiver of this requirement. In either case, the certificate filed and the Affidavit or Waiver will be stamped with the date and time received, as well as the date and time filed. Corporate documents filed with an Affidavit or Waiver may not be filed as approvals.

An Extraordinary Condition is defined by the State of Delaware as any emergency resulting from an attack on, invasion or occupation by foreign military forces of, or disaster, catastrophe, war or other armed conflict, revolution or insurrection, or rioting or civil commotion in, the United States or a locality in which the Secretary of State conducts its business or in which the good faith effort to deliver the instrument and tender the required taxes and fees is made, or the immediate threat of any of the foregoing; or any malfunction or outage of the electrical or telephone service to the Secretary of State's office, or weather or other condition in or about a locality in which the Secretary of State conducts its business, as a result of which the Secretary of State's office is not open for the purpose of the filing of instruments under this Chapter or such filing cannot be effected without extraordinary effort. The Affidavit of Extraordinary Condition form will be available on the document library.

File Stamps
All corporate file stamps will now bear the date and time of delivery, in addition to the date and time of filing. In cases of approval filings, the difference between the time filed and the time delivered can be as much as four hours.

Corporate Records
The corporate record will be suspended for any entity which has any type of corporate filing pending. Certificates, including good standing certificates, certificates reciting fact and certified copies, will not be available for any entity which has a corporate filing pending.

Correcting Imperfections
The time-frame for submission of a corrected document is reduced to 5 business days from the date of notification of the imperfection. If a fileable document is not submitted within 5 business day, the filing will be will be rejected and the file date will be lost.

In a Rush?
Delaware will now offer One Hour Service for all corporate filings and retrievals, beginning April 14, 2003. The rush fee for One Hour service will be $1,000. The new One Hour service will now be referred to as Priority One service, and the Two Hour service will be referred to as Priority Two service. The remaining levels of service are renumbered accordingly, but we will continue to refer to them as Same Day, Next Day, Must Approval, Regular Approval and Routine. One Hour service is not available for preclearances.

Cut-Off Times
To better accommodate the needs of our clients, our cut-off times are changed to the following:

1:30 Same Day/Must Approvals
3:30 Franchise Tax Work/Priority 1 & 2 with written confirmation
5:30 Good Standings/Priority 2 with fax/verbal confirmation
6:30 Next Day
7:00 Priority 1 with fax/verbal confirmation
7:30 Routine/Regular Approvals

Reminders
We are seeing an increased number of documents presented for filing which do not include our suite number. To avoid delays in processing your filings, please ensure that your forms have been updated to reflect Suite 1B as a part of our Delaware address, and ask that your clients do the same.

We Can Help!
If you or your clients need anything done "outside the box" in Delaware, let us know. In many, many cases, arrangements can be made to accommodate their needs, whether it be a weekend or holiday file date or a midnight file time - we can help!

Fee Increases
The proposed fee increases have not been approved. If they are approved, we expect them to be effective August 1, 2003, with the exception of tax increases, which may be retroactive to January 1, 2003. We should have more information by the end of June regarding the proposed fee increases, and I will pass that on to you as soon as it becomes known.

Fee Increases proposed are pending legislative approval, and will be effective August 1, 2003 if approved.

Please note that there are generally smaller fees, such as the county filing fee, that impact your total filing fees.

Tax Increases
Tax Increases are also pending legislative approval, and will be effective January 1, 2003, (Yes, 2003 is the date indicated on the Secretary of State's budget report) if approved. This increase could show on the December 2003 Tax Bill to be paid in March (Corps.) or June (L.P.'s & L.L.C.'s) of 2004.

If you would like a copy of the Delaware House of Representatives 142nd General Assembly House Bill No. 16, please call IBCF and have one of our Corporate Specialists send it to you.

The Corporate Specialist team at International Business Company Formation, Inc.
clientsupport@ibcf.com
1-888-664-6263
1-845-398-0900