Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Co. v. Apponyi

In 1894, in Thomas v. Gregg, 78 Md. 545, this Court selected the Pennsylvania Rule of apportionment of stock dividends between income and principal of a trust estate—that so much of the surplus of the corporation as was earned after the creation of the trust is, when distributed in the form of stock, presumptively income to the life tenant—as the most practicable and equitable test. In 1915, in Northern Central Dividend Cases, 126 Md. 16, the Court was urged by eminent counsel for the corporate trustee, which appears in the case at bar, to follow what is now called the New Jersey Rule (the…