Recharacterisation in law (and sometimes in accountancy) means the treatment of a certain course of conduct in a different manner to which the participants describe it. The term is most important in the penal law of Continental legal systems. In some civil law countries, judges are empowered to "recharacterise the facts" of a case to make the charges more closely align with the evidence. In these systems, the legal charges contained in the indictment are only suggestions from the public prosecutor to the court. The judge may, if it becomes clear that the facts actually support different or additional charges, change the legal characterisation of those facts. Under English law, Lord Hanworth MR referred to the proposition: When the recharacterisation of the facts results in additional charges, or charges which carry a greater penalty, the defense council is usually given an opportunity to be heard concerning the recharacterisation and may request a suspension of the trial to study the recharacterisation. In others, this right to suspend the trial is only implicated if the recharacterisation results in more serious charges. In some legal systems, the court may not recharacterise the facts if it will result in more serious charges. In the United States the term recharacterisation (or recharacterization) is usually used to refer to money which is advance to a company as a loan by a shareholder or other insider, which is recharacterised on bankruptcy as a capital contribution to the shareholder's equity. Also in the US, recharacterization is used in tax law to refer to treatment for tax purposes of a transaction, agreement, event, etc., differently than for other purposes. Examples include recharacterization of gains as dividends under , recharacterization of purported debt instruments as equity under case law and rulings under , and recharacterization of entities under "check the box" regulations . In other common law legal systems, recharacterisation usually refers to the risk that a title transfer arrangement could be treated instead as the grant of a security interest. If a transaction is recharacterised in this manner, there is a risk that the transaction may be void if it has not been registered under applicable registration laws. The title transfer arrangements that are perceived to be vulnerable to recharacterisation are transfers of margin (such as a title transfer under an English Law ISDA Credit Support Annex as collateral for a derivatives transaction), or transactions which involved an actual