It is well known that the torsion part of any finitely generated module over the formal power series ring K[[X]] is a direct summand. In fact, K[[X]] is an algebra dual to the divided power coalgebra over K and the torsion part of any K[[X]]-module actually identifies with the rational part of that module. More generally, for a certain general enough class of coalgebras-those having only finite dimensional subcomodules-we see that the above phenomenon is preserved: the set of torsion elements of any C (*)-module is exactly the rational submodule. With this starting point in mind, given a coalgebra C we investigate when the rational submodule of any finitely generated left C (*)-module is a direct summand. We prove various properties of coalgebras C having this splitting property. Just like in the K[[X]] case, we see that standard examples of coalgebras with this property are the chain coalgebras which are coalgebras whose lattice of left (or equivalently, right, two-sided) coideals form a chain. We give some representation theoretic characterizations of chain coalgebras, which turn out to make a left-right symmetric concept. In fact, in the main result of this paper we characterize the colocal coalgebras where this splitting property holds non-trivially (i.e. infinite dimensional coalgebras) as being exactly the chain coalgebras. This characterizes the cocommutative coalgebras of this kind. Furthermore, we give characterizations of chain coalgebras in particular cases and construct various and general classes of examples of coalgebras with this splitting property.
