Legal entity

A legal entity is a legal construct through which the law allows a group of natural persons to act as if they were a single person for certain purposes. The most common purposes are lawsuits, property ownership, and contracts.

A legal entity is not always something else than the natural persons of which it is composed as one can see with a company or corporation.

Some examples of legal entities include:

• companies
• cooperatives (co-ops)
• corporations
• municipalities
• natural persons
• political parties
• sovereigns
• states
• temples, in some legal systems, have separate legal personality^[1]
• trade unions
• ship or vessel

1. ↑ Williams v The Shipping Corporation of India (US District Court, Eastern District Virginia), 10 March 1980, 63 ILR 363