Stock Certificate Dividend Questions

[Cortopassi]

If anyone has ever dealt with something similar, I'd appreciate facts/opinions.

My wife's uncle passed away last month. Found some First Chicago Corp paper stock certificates from 1974 in his safe deposit box. Passed the info onto his broker and the transfer agents are researching it now. They definitely see the shares in the records.

First Chicago went through a few buyouts/renamings (NBD, BankOne, then finally, currently is JPM Chase).

Simply looking at the multiplier ratios when the shares changed to the new companies, the current number of Chase shares are about 4x the original number of shares of First Chicago. Nice.

The question is dividends. The broker told me for paper shares, the dividends would have been reinvested as more shares. If this is the case, the original number of shares roughly (my spreadsheet calcs) is near 13x the number of original shares. Very nice.

However, if the dividends are calculated as just cash accumulating somewhere, that bring the total $ down significantly.

Any hard and fast rules of how dividends across 40 years are treated for paper certificates?

Thanks!