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Concept
Unincorporated association
Summary
Unincorporated associations are one vehicle for people to cooperate towards a common goal.
The range of possible unincorporated associations is nearly limitless, but typical examples are:
An amateur football team who agree to hire a pitch once a week and split the cost.
Residents of a street who agree to pay into a collective fund for street sweeping, etc.
A co-operative.
A trade union.
A professional association.
This article focuses on unincorporated associations in common law jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. From a legal point of view, the most significant feature of an association is exactly that they are unincorporated: i.e., they lack legal personality. This is in contrast to some civil law jurisdictions, which confer legal personality on associations once they are suitably registered.
Unincorporated associations are cheap and easy to form, requiring a bare minimum of formalities to bring them into existence. (Indeed, the common law on contracts means they can even be formed without their members realising it.) They are also extremely flexible, with examples of tiny associations of just a few people, and national organisations with thousands of members.
Whether or not a group of people is an unincorporated association is not always clear. A summary definition is
a group of people
gathered for a common purpose
but not for profit
intending to create a legally binding relationship between themselves.
There is no statutory definition of an unincorporated association, so it has fallen to judges to define them. In the leading case, Conservative and Unionist Central Office v Burrell, Lord Justice Lawton defined an unincorporated association as:
[T]wo or more persons bound together for one or more common purposes, not being business purposes, by mutual undertakings, each having mutual duties and obligations, in an organisation which has rules which identify in whom control of it and its funds rests and upon what terms and which can be joined or left at will.
Official source
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