Company Constitutions Ever Get Updated?

Company Constitutions – What are the consequences of a Constitution Past it’s Use By Date?

Currently company constitutions have no explicit use by date, and lawyers are not required after establishing a company to follow up with you to advise you if your company has fallen behind the legal environment.

We are well versed in the need to keep sophisticated software up to date – through free offers (for example Apple’s OS updates) or through service arrangements (for example Microsoft’s subscription option for Office). But no movement from the legal Industry on this yet? Are the consequences not significant enough?

For example the rules governing your company can become outdated as laws change, classes of Shares my be very useful which are not available, governance by officers may be rigid and old fashioned (requiring actual physical meetings, or not notification by snail mail only etc.). There are many weird things in old company constitutions.

Are you operating your company in accordance with your Constitution? Have you read your constitution?

If your company is not operating in accordance with its rules contained in the constitution, some actions of your company has taken may at law be invalid and unenforceable by your company.

So what do you do? Pay a lawyer to read through your constitution and quiz you on al the ways you want to operate and make a myriad of amendments? Or do you just use the company laws that exist to overwrite your old one with a brand new constitution? Kind of just ‘download new constitution”…

Do you query whether you need the new operating system – or do you rely on the software provider to provide a new operating system when needed – with new features, better data compression, security improvements etc.?

If you are someone who wants to make sure you have the right up to date tools – including your corporate operating system as it were – your company constitution: we have this year introduced a new service: Constitution Update

If you want to opt in on this we will update your constitution every 3 years and send the required paperwork to you by email. Retaining back up records for your security and recovery as needed. To find out the current cost of this service, please get in touch with us.

Alternatively, we can do a one-off up-date for you for about half the price of a new company set up.