Legal entity

A legal entity is a legal construct through which the law allows a group of natural persons to act as if it were an individual for certain purposes. The most common purposes are lawsuits, property ownership, and contracts. Sometimes referred to as corporate personhood, this concept allows for easy conduct of business by having ownership, lawsuits, and agreements under the name of the legal entity instead of the several names of the people making up the entity.

A legal entity is not necessarily distinct from the natural persons of which it is composed. Most legal entities are simply amalgamations of the persons that make it up for convenience's sake. A legal entity that does have a separate existence from its members is called a corporation. This distinction gives the corporation its unique perpetual succession privilege and is also the source of the limited liability of corporate members. Some other legal entities also enjoy limited liability of members, but not on account of separate existence.

Some examples of legal entities include :
* associations
* banks
* collectives
* companies
* cooperatives (co-ops)
* corporations
* corporate liability
* estates
* European economic interest groupings (EEIGs)
* flow-through entities (FTEs)
* limited liability companies
* municipalities
* partnerships
* political parties
* political action committees (PACs)
* states
* trade unions
* trusts
* persons
* natural persons
* ship or vessel

See also

* Company (law)

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