Factual association (Association de Fait in French, Feitelijke Vereniging in Dutch) is a judicial term used in Continental European civil law, as well as in some derived law systems.
A factual association is an organization which only exists because of a common achievement or goal. When two people decide to develop something together, the factual association is born. Stricto sensu, it is a club without a special judicial ground. The factual association can never be a part in contracts, can never own property, can never make donations or accept legacies. Every action made by the organization must be made in name of one of the members who will be personally responsible for the consequences of that action.
To secure political independence, in most European countries, political parties are factual associations. Because of that status, they can never be condemned as a whole.
Famous quotes containing the words factual and/or association:
“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)