5Entities

5 Entities

(1) Entity means any of the following: (a) an individual; (b) a body corporate; (c) a corporation sole; (d) a body politic; (e) a partnership; (f) any other unincorporated association or body of persons; (g) a trust; (h) a superannuation fund.

Note: The term entity is used in a number of different but related senses. It covers all kinds of legal persons. It also covers groups of legal persons, and other things, that in practice are treated as having a separate identity in the same way as a legal person does.

(2) Paragraph (1)(f) does not include a non‑entity joint venture. (3) The trustee of a trust or of a superannuation fund is taken to be an entity consisting of the person who is the trustee, or the persons who are the trustees, at any given time.

Note: This is because a right or obligation cannot be conferred or imposed on an entity that is not a legal person.

(4) A legal person can have a number of different capacities in which the person does things. In each of those capacities, the person is taken to be a different entity.

Note: Example: In addition to his or her personal capacity, an individual may be:

(a) sole trustee of one or more trusts; and
(b) one of a number of trustees of a further trust.

Note: In his or her personal capacity, he or she is one entity. As trustee of each trust, he or she is a different entity. The trustees of the further trust are a different entity again, of which the individual is a member.

(5) If a provision refers to an entity of a particular kind, it refers to the entity in its capacity as that kind of entity, not to that entity in any other capacity.

Note: Example: A provision that refers to a company does not cover a company in a capacity as trustee, unless it also refers to a trustee.