Anna Nicole's Mom Gives Up Fight For Body
Anna Nicole Smith's estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, will not be taking her fight for custody of her daughter's remains to a higher court, CBS News has learned from Arthur's appellate attorney, Roberta G. Mandel.
A Florida appeals court ruled Wednesday to uphold Judge Larry Seidlin's decision to give custody of Anna Nicole Smith's body to a court-appointed lawyer representing her nearly 6-month-old daughter Dannielynn.
The court concluded that Smith's "last ascertainable wish" was to be buried alongside her son in the Bahamas.
"This finding is not essentially disputed," the judges wrote in their decision.
Lawyer Richard Milstein, the baby's advocate, said in a statement Wednesday after the ruling that the funeral was set for Friday.
He declined to comment further, saying he wanted to "uphold the decorum and dignity that should be maintained throughout this process, for the sake of Dannielynn and the memories she will have of her mother's funeral."
It was not immediately clear when the body would be moved.
Dr. Joshua Perper, the Broward County medical examiner, said that embalmers would have to take another look at the body, but that he hopes it is "in such condition that a second viewing will be possible." Stern, Arthur and others have been allowed to view the body at Perper's office.
Smith's body has been stored at the medical examiner's office since shortly after she died Feb. 8 at 39. A cause of death has not been released.
Three judges from the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach, Fla. considered a request by the Playboy model's mother to let her bury her daughter in Texas. As both sides argued their cases in court, judges seemed to favor the argument of Howard K. Stern, Smith's boyfriend.
One of the three judges presiding over the Broward County court questioned whether it would be fair to the child to carry out Virgie Arthur's request to have Smith's body buried in Texas while the infant's brother, Daniel Smith, is buried in the Bahamas.
Arthur's attorney stressed that Smith's supposed wishes to be buried in the Bahamas were never in writing. "The law stands that if it's not expressed in writing, then we look to the person who is a legally authorized person," Mandel said in court Wednesday.
Mandel said Arthur is that "authorized person" according to a funeral home director's statute, since Smith's child is under the age of 18.
"(Virgie Arthur) still is the legally authorized person as the trial court found … give this mother a chance to bury her child," she said in closing statements.
Mandel told reporters earlier this week that she and her client were going to take this case as far as necessary.
An attorney for Stern said Wednesday that an earlier ruling should be upheld because "Judge Seidlin made the right moral and the right legal choice."
Last week, Judge Seidlin turned the burial decision over to a court-appointed advocate for Smith's infant daughter, and the advocate said Smith would be buried next to her son in the Bahamas. Smith's mother appealed the ruling.
Attorneys for Stern say Arthur is trying to "place her in death where she never wanted to be in life."
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Smith's baby daughter is living in a gated, waterfront home in the Bahamas, where a judge is hearing the child custody dispute between Stern and Arthur.
On Tuesday, Arthur saw the little girl for the first time and left the home in tears.
"She's in mourning having lost her daughter and grandson both within the last five months," said her attorney, Deborah Rose. Smith's son, Daniel, died last fall in the Bahamas just a few days after Dannielynn's birth. Smith and Stern were living in the Bahamas at the time, and Daniel, 20, is buried there.
Rose said Arthur's permission for the visit with Dannielynn did not come from the court, but she declined to say who had authorized it. Arthur was in the Bahamas for a hearing Tuesday that Rose described as a "small technical procedure."
"Our objective is really to assist our client in having access to her granddaughter and foremost to ensure the best interests and welfare of the child are secured," Rose said.
The baby's paternity is also in dispute, a Florida judge said Wednesday that his court does not have jurisdiction in the matter.
Stern is listed on her birth certificate, but two other men also claim to be the father. Los Angeles photographer Larry Birkhead, Smith's ex-boyfriend, wants a Fort Lauderdale court to enforce a California judge's orders so he can get DNA samples from Smith's body and the baby. Frederic von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, also says he may be the father.
Smith married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. The reality TV star and Playboy Playmate had been fighting his family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995, and her baby daughter could inherit millions.