A picture encoding apparatus configured to hierarchically partition a block of picture data into sub-blocks; determine that a sub-block being coded belongs to an unequally-sized partitioned block; prepare a list of neighboring blocks for the sub-block of the unequally-sized partitioned block based on a size of the sub-block of the unequally-sized partitioned block and a partitioning type of at least one neighboring block of the unequally-sized partitioned block; and derive a context model that is used to encode split information of the sub-block of the unequally-sized partitioned block into a bit stream based on the prepared list of neighboring blocks.