Mark Harder has very quietly provided excellent commentary
to Michigan’s Uniform Principal and Income Act. As with the commentary to the
Michigan Trust Code (MTC), Harder brings deep scholarship and attention to
detail to the task.
The Uniform Principal and Income Act is the third in a series of statutes on this topic that began in 1931. This uniform act has been adopted in at least 46 states and the District of Columbia. It provides default rules governing the classification between income and principal of receipts and disbursements from estates and trusts that apply when the governing instrument is silent. Understanding this act is important because
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the classification of receipts and disbursements dictates who receives income as determined at different points in time,
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the allocation of receipts and disbursements affects the determination of how much beneficiaries will receive,
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the act facilitates the Uniform Prudent Investor Act and modern portfolio theory, and
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it allows a fiduciary to properly account to the beneficiaries under EPIC and the MTC.
The commentary encompasses the act itself, each individual article, and 33 statutory sections. It can currently be found in the online edition of the Michigan Probate Sourcebook, and it was published in print in late May 2015