Anna Nicole Leaves Behind Legal Tangle
With major legal issues undecided, Anna Nicole Smith's legacy could take years to untangle and could leave her baby daughter with millions of dollars or nothing at all.
Smith's battle over late husband J. Howard Marshall II's oil fortune with the family of his son grinds on in Texas. And there is a pending class action suit seeking unspecified damages against Smith and TrimSpa Inc., alleging the company's marketing of a weight-loss pill with Smith as spokeswoman was false and misleading.
Two men are also contesting the paternity of Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. At an emergency hearing Friday in Los Angeles, a judge refused to order an emergency DNA test of Smith's body, but he ordered that the body be preserved until a hearing in 10 days, attorneys said.
Experts say the eventual custody decision could determine the child's inheritance.
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For now, her daughter is believed to be in the Bahamas in the care of a family friend, CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports. But it will be weeks before anyone knows what killed her mother.
James Neavitt, an attorney for Smith's partner Howard K. Stern, has said that his client has custody of the 5-month-old. He said that although Smith and Stern were not legally married, he is the legal father of Dannielynn.
"Right now he's the father. That's the presumption," Neavitt said. "He's on the birth certificate, Anna said he was the father. He said he was the father. The administrative process in the Bahamas says he's the father and until somebody comes in and tries to show different with evidence, he's the father."
If it is determined Stern is the biological father and if he was legally married to Smith — which has yet to be established — Stern, not Dannielynn, would likely inherit Smith's estate, experts say.
Smith's former boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, says he is the girl's father.
If Smith and the biological father were not married and Smith left no will, the father and child likely would split her assets, according to Christopher Cline, an estate planning lawyer with the firm of Holland and Knight.
"It's a really large legal quagmire," said Cline, who enumerated some of the many questions hanging in the balance.Attorney: Stern Has Custody Of Anna's Baby
"I've never seen a case with more moving parts," he said, comparing the legal morass in its complexity with unraveling the estate of billionaire Howard Hughes — albeit with less money involved.
But Friday, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor said that he had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her infant daughter's father. The new claim is by Prince Frederick von Anhalt.
Cline outlined a series of crucial questions that range from the paternity of the child to Smith's country of residency and, most importantly, whether she had a will. If there was a will, Cline said, questions would arise about where it was drafted and signed. If she did not have a will, the laws of her country of residence would apply.
She had been living in the Bahamas recently and gave birth to her daughter there in September.
The baby was being cared for in the Bahamas by the mother of Shane Gibson, the Bahamian immigration minister who is a close friend of Smith's, People magazine reported on its Web site, citing unidentified sources.
A visibly shaken Gibson declined comment as he was leaving his office Thursday night, and he has not responded to several messages left by The Associated Press seeking comment.
Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, said she had no plans to press for custody.
"I want her to be with her father whichever that one is, but I want to be involved in her life," Arthur said Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Other questions that will need to be answered are whether she was married at the time of her death, and how her death affects the lawsuit still pending against her late husband's estate.
Experts in Texas, where Smith fought for millions of dollars in inheritance, said the court battles will go on.
"The claims will survive to her estate," said Charles W. "Rocky" Rhodes, a South Texas College of Law professor who has followed the complicated series of lawsuits involving Smith and the family of her dead husband.
"In criminal cases like we had with Ken Lay, where the defendant died, it was over," he said. "But in civil cases where the claim is for money, your estate and the heirs you have from the estate are able to continue the litigation in the name of the representatives of the estate."
E. Pierce Marshall, her late husband's son who had been fighting her over his father's estate, died in June. But the Marshall family vowed to continue the fight.
Family lawyer Mark Vincent Kaplan of Los Angeles, who has handled many celebrity paternity cases, said he believes Stern initially will receive custody of the child because he is listed on the birth certificate.
"The paternity test should be expedited," he said, "because if he is not the bio dad he has no rights to custody. But I predict there will be a will saying that Howard K. Stern is the father."
He added that another complication could arise if Stern was the lawyer who drew up the will and may be listed as the executor.
"By law, he can't be both the executor and the beneficiary," Kaplan said.
The Smith saga has been filled with so many deaths, Kaplan said, that lawyers are beginning to talk about a curse on the litigation. Just five months ago, Smith's 20-year-old son Daniel died suddenly in the Bahamas in what was believed to be a drug-related death.