The secretary of state shall charge and collect the following fees:
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.
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.
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.
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.
N.D.C.C. § 54-09-04