LLP Event Filings: Partner Joined, Resigned or the Agreement Changed — Forms 3, 4 and 15

Something changed inside your LLP. A partner joined. A partner walked away. You rewrote the profit share, moved office across town — or across a state line. Each of those events has its own form, its own 30-day clock and its own fee, and the Registrar learns about your LLP only from these filings. Until the form is filed, the public record still shows the old world. This guide is the map I wish partners kept pinned above the desk: which event, which form, by when, and what it costs if the filing slips.

The map first: three forms, three kinds of change

One warning before the detail. These three forms talk to each other. A partner change usually amends the agreement too, so Forms 3 and 4 often travel together as linked filings. And the annual return, Form 11, simply repeats whatever the event filings have put on record — file the events late or not at all, and your annual return ends up contradicting your own register. That contradiction is exactly what the event-based filings section of our LLP annual filing page calls the ambush, and it is the ambush I see most often in practice.

Form 4: a partner joined, left, or changed

Form 4 is the notice of appointment, cessation, or change in the name, address or designation of a partner or a designated partner. Section 25 of the Act builds the clock in two halves. First, every partner must tell the LLP about a change in their own name or address within 15 days of the change. Then the LLP files the notice with the Registrar in Form 4 within 30 days — 30 days from the date a person becomes or ceases to be a partner, and 30 days from a change in a partner's name or address.

The consent paperwork sits inside this form, and it is not decoration. A person who is becoming a designated partner must consent to act — sections 7(3) and 7(4) of the Act rest on that consent — and Rule 22(3) requires Form 4 for an incoming partner to carry that partner's own signed statement consenting to become a partner. The form is signed by a designated partner and certified by a practising chartered accountant, company secretary or cost accountant who has verified the particulars against the LLP's books and records. Sloppy consent trails are the first thing that unravels when partners later fall out and one of them claims they never agreed to the role they are shown holding.

Two practical points catch firms every season:

• The incoming partner needs a DPIN and a working DSC before the filing, not after. A designated partner must hold a Designated Partner Identification Number. If the person already holds a DIN as a company director, that number serves as the DPIN — there is no second application. Without a DIN or DPIN, apply first, then file. The partner's digital signature also has to be registered on the MCA portal before Form 4 can be signed and submitted cleanly.
• An exit is not finished when the farewell is done. Where the agreement says nothing about cessation, section 24(1) lets a partner resign by giving the other partners at least 30 days' written notice. And section 24(3) carries the sting: a former partner is still regarded, by anyone dealing with the LLP, as a partner of the LLP — unless that person has notice of the cessation, or the notice has been delivered to the Registrar. An unfiled Form 4 leaves your ex-partner's name on the public register and leaves them exposed in the eyes of every bank, landlord and customer who checks it. Thirty days. That really is all you get.

If the only change is a designation — a partner becoming a designated partner, or a change of nominee for a body-corporate partner — Form 4 alone does the job. The moment the change also rewrites the agreement, Form 3 joins it.

Form 3: the agreement itself changed

Section 23 makes the LLP agreement the document that governs the partners' mutual rights and duties, and Rule 21 requires that agreement — and every change to it — to be filed with the Registrar in Form 3. The first filing is due within 30 days of incorporation. Every later change gets its own 30 days, counted from the date of the change.

What counts as a change that needs Form 3? Read it widely. A change in contribution. A new profit-sharing ratio. A change in the business activities the LLP carries on. A new partner, a departing partner, a revised clause on remuneration, decision rights or exit — anything that amends what the agreement says. If you signed a supplementary agreement, that signing is the event, and the clock is already running. What the agreement should actually say, clause by clause, is a drafting question I have covered separately in the LLP agreement clauses guide — this post stays on the filing: get the executed supplementary agreement, file Form 3 within its 30 days, and file it as a linked form with Form 4 whenever the same event changed the partner list.

Think of the pair the way you would think of a house move. Form 4 changes who lives in the house. Form 3 changes the deed that says on what terms they live there. Most real events change both, and filing only one leaves the record half-updated — the register shows a new partner bound by an agreement that still names the old one.

Form 15: the registered office moved

Every LLP must keep a registered office where notices and records can reach it — section 13(3) — and Rule 17 sets the route for moving it. The notice of the change goes to the Registrar in Form 15.

For a move within the same State, the routine is short. Take the partners' consent in the manner your agreement provides — where the agreement is silent on the point, the consent of all partners. Complete the shift. Then file Form 15 within 30 days of complying with those steps, with proof of the new address. No newspaper notice. No creditor consent.

A move from one State to another is a different animal, and Rule 17(4) adds two gates before you may file:

• Public notice first. Publish a general notice of the shift at least 21 days before filing Form 15 — in a daily newspaper published in English, and in a daily newspaper published in the principal language of the district where the registered office is situated and circulating in that district.
• Secured creditors, if any, must consent. An LLP that has secured creditors needs their consent to the inter-state shift.

Form 15 then goes to the Registrar from whose jurisdiction the office is shifting, within 30 days of completing the Rule 17(4) steps, with a copy for the Registrar of the State you are moving into. Plan backwards from the 21-day notice: an inter-state move decided today cannot honestly be filed this week, and partners who book the movers before reading Rule 17 learn that the hard way.

What the filings cost when you file on time

The normal fees sit in Annexure A to the LLP Rules, and they are modest. Forms 3 and 15 carry the general filing fee, charged by the LLP's total contribution:

Form 4 has its own, simpler fee: ₹50 where the LLP is a small LLP, and ₹150 for other LLPs. A small LLP, in broad terms, is one whose contribution does not exceed ₹25 lakh and whose turnover in the preceding financial year did not exceed ₹40 lakh. Stamp duty on a supplementary agreement, where your change needs one, is separate — it follows your State's stamp schedule, not this table.

Late? The ₹100-a-day story is out of date for these forms

You will still read, on plenty of websites, that a late LLP form costs a flat ₹100 per day. For Forms 3, 4 and 15, that stopped being the law on 1 April 2022. The LLP (Amendment) Rules, 2022 — G.S.R. 109(E) — replaced the per-day charge in Annexure A with a slab-based additional fee: a multiple of the normal fee, rising with the length of the delay, and charged at a lower ladder for small LLPs than for other LLPs.

Run one sum. A non-small LLP with contribution above ₹1 crore files Form 3 six months late: the normal fee is ₹600, the slab at 91–180 days is 20×, so the additional fee alone is ₹12,000 — on a form that cost ₹600 on time. The slab rewards speed in the first fortnight and punishes drift after that. File in the first 15 days of delay and the damage stays at one extra normal fee. Wait a year and you are paying twenty-five to fifty times.

One boundary worth stating plainly, because the two get confused: the per-day tail you may have read about — an extra ₹10 or ₹20 for each day beyond 360 days — belongs to the annual Forms 8 and 11, not to these event forms. And the annual cycle has its own discipline, set out in our Form 11 annual return guide. Event forms carry the slab above. Nothing more, nothing less.

A working routine that keeps you out of the slab

Keep a one-page event register for the LLP. Date of the event, what changed, which forms it triggers, the day the 30 days expire. Diary the expiry date the day the event happens — not the day someone remembers it. Get the incoming partner's DPIN, DSC and signed consent before the appointment date, not scrambled together inside the filing week. And when two forms are linked, file them together, so the register never shows a partner change without the agreement that explains it.

If your LLP has an event sitting unfiled right now — a partner who left months ago, an agreement amended and never reported, an office moved without Form 15 — the ComplyKart LLP annual filing team will work out which forms the event triggers, file them in the right order, and bring the register back in line with reality, so the next Form 11 you file tells the same story as your own records.