Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Legal tangle over Anna Nicole Smith's body grows

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 15, 2007

FORT LAUDERDALE - The bickering over Anna Nicole Smith spiraled into a post-mortem legal war Wednesday, with judges on both coasts issuing rulings and a parade of lawyers fighting for control of the body.

At the end of the day, though, Smith's remains still were at the medical examiner's office, and a judge here said the dispute could be lengthy.

"We're going to have hearings, as many hearings as we need," Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin said. "This is just a warmup."

At least three people are seeking control of Smith's body - her longtime companion Howard K. Stern, her estranged mother Vergie Arthur and photographer Larry Birkhead, who claims to have fathered the model's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn.

Stern says he is executor of Smith's will and wants to have her buried next to her son in the Bahamas; Arthur wants her daughter buried in her home state of Texas; and Birkhead simply wants to prove he is the father of Dannielynn, who potentially could inherit millions.

For now, though, the judge said Smith's body would stay where it was.

"This body's not leaving Broward County till I make the ruling," he said.

Smith, 39, died Feb. 8 after collapsing at a hotel. She was a Playboy Playmate of the Year and the widow of Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, whom she married in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. She had been fighting his family over his fortune since his death in 1995.

On Wednesday morning, a case filed by Birkhead prompted a brief hearing before Circuit Judge Lawrence Korda in the court's family division. Korda ordered Smith's body temporarily retained by the morgue, following an earlier ruling in California.

But a Los Angeles judge later Wednesday lifted the ruling that the body be held.

It appeared the case would become solely under Seidlin's jurisdiction in probate court.

When discussion resumes today, the judge will hear more of the sordid drama that has evolved since Smith's death.

Stern's filing Wednesday acknowledges Smith's will makes no mention of where she wanted to be buried, but his attorneys say he is authorized to make her funeral arrangements.

"It is very clear what she wanted," said Krista Barth, a lawyer for Stern. "I think we all know Anna wants to be next to Daniel, and anything else is a tragedy."

Stern's attorneys provided a transcript of interviews Smith gave to Entertainment Tonight in October in which she said Arthur was her birth mother but nothing more.

"You want to hear all the things she did to me? You want to hear all the things she let my father do to me or my brother do to me? Or my sister?" she said, according to the transcript.

Arthur's attorney, Stephen Tunstall, did not comment on the specifics alleged in the Stern filing, though he did say the mother had become estranged from Smith over drug use.

"Since the dawn of civilization, the next of kin has been given the rights and responsibility of their dead," Tunstall said.

As for Birkhead, his attorneys say that he simply wants to ensure he gets a DNA sample that has not been tampered with and that they had no interest in the burial.

[Last modified February 15, 2007, 01:28:20]