Cite as: 507 U. S. 490 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
based on the place of purchase." Ibid. Like New York's proposal, the rule advocated in Pennsylvania would use a statistical surrogate instead of the debtor's records to locate the last known addresses of creditors. That much is clear from the Pennsylvania dissent's description of the rejected rule as "a reasonable approximation." Id., at 221 (opinion of Powell, J.). New York may object to the cost and difficulty of culling creditors' last known addresses from brokers' records,12 but in Pennsylvania, we expressly refused "to vary the application of the [primary] rule according to the adequacy of the debtor's records." Id., at 215. And we decline to do so here.
Despite our refusal to adopt New York's proposal for statistical analysis of creditors' addresses under the primary rule, we decline Delaware's invitation to enter judgment against New York on the basis of the Master's findings. Exceptions and Brief for Plaintiff Delaware 85. On remand, if New York can establish by reference to debtors' records that the creditors who were owed particular securities distributions had last known addresses in New York, New York's right to escheat under the primary rule will supersede Delaware's right under the secondary rule. As we noted in Texas, "the State of corporate domicile should be allowed to . . . retai[n] the property for itself only until some other State comes forward with proof that it has a superior right to es-cheat." 379 U. S., at 682. Accord, Pennsylvania, 407 U. S., at 210-211. If New York or any other claimant State fails to offer such proof on a transaction-by-transaction basis or to provide some other proper mechanism for ascertaining creditors' last known addresses, the creditor's State will not prevail under the primary rule, and the secondary rule will control. Id., at 215.
12 New York and other States could have anticipated and prevented some of the difficulties stemming from incomplete debtor records, for nothing in our decisions "prohibits the States from requiring [debtors] to keep adequate address records." Pennsylvania, 407 U. S., at 215.
509
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