Corporation sole

A corporation sole is a legal entity consisting of a single ("sole") incorporated office, occupied by a single ("sole") natural person. A corporation sole is one of two types of corporation, the other being a corporation aggregate. This allows corporations (often religious corporations or Commonwealth governments) to pass without interval in time from one office holder to the next successor-in-office, giving the positions legal continuity with subsequent office holders having identical powers and possessions to their predecessors.

Most corporations sole are church-related (for example, the Archbishop of Canterbury), but some political offices of the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States are also corporations sole. In the United Kingdom, for example, many of the Secretaries of State are corporations sole. In contrast to a corporation sole, a corporation aggregate consists of two or more persons, typically run by a board of directors. Another difference is that corporations aggregate may have owners or stockholders, neither of which are a feature of a corporation sole.

The concept of corporation sole originated as a means for orderly transfer of ecclesiastical property, serving to keep the title within the denomination or religious society. In order to keep the religious property from being treated as the estate of the vicar of the church, the property was titled to the office of the corporation sole. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, ecclesiastical property is usually titled to the diocesan bishop, who serves in the office of the corporation sole.

The Roman 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. This is, however, not the case worldwide, and legal application varies from country to country. In the jurisdictions of England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, a Roman Catholic bishop is not a corporation sole and real property is held by way of land trusts. This position is largely due to the suppression of Roman Catholicism which began in England with Henry VIII and the successful English Reformation, and began later in Ireland with the Penal Laws.

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