§ 54-09-04 — Fees

1. The secretary of state shall charge and collect the following fees:
a. Unless otherwise provided by law, for affixing the signature of the secretary of
state, certificate, or seal, or combination thereof to any document, ten dollars.
b. For searching records and archives of the state, five dollars. For the purposes of
this section, a search of records conducted by the secretary of state for which a
fee must be collected includes the following:
(1) A search of a filed document that is active or archived, an archived index, or
an index of business name changes to identify specific information to satisfy
a request;
(2) A search of any record for which written verification of the facts of the search
is required; and
(3) For every search of records when the request for the search is contained in
a list compiled by the requester.
The secretary of state may provide, at no charge, information from publications or
reference materials published or maintained by the secretary of state and verbal
confirmation of any element of information maintained in a computer database.
c. For filing any transaction not otherwise provided for, ten dollars.
d. For filing any process, notice, or demand for service, the fee provided in section
10-01.1-03.
e. For preparing any listing or compilation of any information recorded or filed in the
office of the secretary of state, forty dollars for each record type requested.
Unless otherwise agreed to by the secretary of state, the information must be
provided in an electronic format. If provided in a paper format, an additional fee of
fifty cents per page may be charged.
2. An individual required to file an oath of office with the secretary of state may not be
charged for filing the oath of office, nor may a state or county officer be charged for
filing any document with the secretary of state when acting in the officer's official
capacity. All fees when collected must be paid by the secretary of state into the state
treasury at the end of each month and placed to the credit of the state. Unless
otherwise provided by law, the secretary of state shall retain a handling charge from
filing fees tendered when a document submitted to the secretary of state under any
law is rejected and not perfected. The handling charge is five dollars or fifty percent of
the filing fee, whichever is greater, but may not exceed one hundred dollars.
3. If, upon due presentment, any check, draft, money order, or other form of lawful
payment provisionally accepted in payment of any filing fee authorized to be charged
and collected by the secretary of state, is not honored or paid, or if no lawful form of
payment accompanies the filing, any record of credit or payment must be canceled or
reversed as though no credit had been given or payment attempted and the filing or
action is void. The secretary of state may return to the last-known address of the filer
any record or document that was attempted to be filed or may retain as unfiled the
record or document for a reasonable time to permit proper payment and filing.
4. This section does not apply to fees submitted for filing in, or information obtained from,
the computerized central notice system, to the computerized Uniform Commercial
Code central filing database, or to the computerized statutory liens database.