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A U.S. state is a federated state of the United States of America that shares its sovereignty with the United States federal government. Since the admission of Hawaii as a state in August 1959, there have been fifty U.S. states. Because of the shared sovereignty between a U.S. state and the U.S. federal government, an American is a citizen of both the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. State citizenship and residency are flexible and no government approval is required nor obtained to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders (e.g., paroled convicts and children of divorced spouses who are sharing custody). States are further subdivided into counties or county-equivalents, which may or may not be assigned some individual governmental authority. Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia use the official title of Commonwealth rather than State.