Corporation sole


A corporation sole is a legal entity consisting of a single incorporated office, occupied by a single natural person. This structure allows corporations to pass without interruption from one officeholder to the next, giving positions legal continuity with subsequent officeholders having identical powers and possessions to their predecessors. A corporation sole is one of two types of corporation, the other being a corporation aggregate.

Ecclesiastical origins

Most corporations sole are church-related, although some political offices of the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States are corporations sole.
The Catholic Church continues to use corporations sole in holding titles of property: as recently as 2002, it split a diocese in the US state of California into many smaller corporations sole and with each parish priest becoming his own corporation sole, thus limiting the diocese's liability for any sexual abuse cases|sexual abuse] or other wrongful activity in which the priest might engage. This is, however, not the case everywhere, and legal application varies. For instance, other U.S. jurisdictions have used corporations at multiple levels.
The [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] uses the corporation sole form for its president, which is legally listed as "The [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#Name and legal entities|The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]".
Iglesia ni Cristo was registered as corporation sole with the Insular Government of the Philippines in 1914.

The Crown

Within most constitutional monarchies, notably the Commonwealth realms, the Crown is a nonstatutory corporation sole. Although conceptually speaking, the office and officeholder retain dual capacities in that they may act both in a corporate capacity and in an individual capacity, they are inseparably fused in law; there is no legal distinction between the office and the individual person who holds it. The Crown legally acts as a person when it enters into contracts and possesses property.
The sovereign's status as a corporation sole ensures that all references to the king, the queen, His Majesty, Her Majesty, and the Crown are synonymous, referring to exactly the same legal personality over time, though the identity is in at least some cases also asserted by statute without reference to the concept of corporation sole. While natural persons who serve as sovereign pass on, the sovereign never legally dies; thus the corporate nature of the office of sovereign ensures that the authority of the state continues uninterrupted. In other words, the sovereign is made a corporation sole to prevent the possibility of disruption or interregnum, thereby preserving the stability of the Crown. For this reason, at the moment of the demise of the sovereign, a successor is immediately and automatically in place.
As a corporation sole, the legal person of the sovereign is the personification of the state and consequently acts as a guarantor of the rule of law and the fount of all executive authority behind the state's institutions.

Secular application in the United States

Every state of the United States recognizes corporations sole under common law, and about a third of the states have specific statutes that stipulate the conditions under which that state recognizes the corporations sole that are filed with that state for acquiring, holding, and disposing of title for church and religious society property.

Examples of corporations sole in the United Kingdom

Governmental

Private entities

In the Church of England

Examples of corporations sole in New Zealand

Examples of corporations sole elsewhere