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Anna Nicole Smith leaves a legacy only lawyers could love

By John Rogers
ASSOCIATED PRESS

4:11 p.m. April 19, 2007

LOS ANGELES – When Anna Nicole Smith died in February she left behind an infant daughter, a spurned ex-lover, an estranged mother and a financial legacy so complicated it could take a small army of lawyers years to unravel.
The former reality TV star, who lived a life as large as her famous bustline, died while embroiled in legal battles in two countries in which hundreds of millions of dollars might ultimately be the prize going to the winner.

Meanwhile, the next episode in the real-life reality show that was Smith’s life and death is scheduled to unfold Friday at a custody hearing in the Bahamas involving Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn; her mother, Virgie Arthur; and her former boyfriend, Larry Birkhead.
The eventual winner of that dispute not only takes over the care of 7-month-old Dannielynn but will likely also win the right to carry on a legal fight for a share of the billion-dollar estate of Smith’s late husband, the colorful Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall.

The couple, who seemingly had nothing in common except strip bars, met in one in 1991 while Smith, still a couple years away from becoming a Playboy Playmate of the Year, was working as a topless dancer. They married three years later when the oil baron was 89 and Smith, by then a model for Guess jeans, was 26.

Before Marshall’s death the following year, Smith sued his son E. Pierce Marshall, claiming he was cheating her out of money her husband wanted her to have.

One of the Marshall estate’s attorneys, Yale law school professor G. Eric Brunstad Jr., said this week that Smith had already blown through $8 million of the old man’s money at that point and that was all he intended her to have.

After Marshall’s August 1990 death, a Texas probate court jury ruled that Smith deserved nothing. But a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Los Angeles awarded her $450 million from an estate then estimated to be worth $1.6 billion.

A U.S. district court in Los Angeles later took over the case and cut the award to $88 million, plus $42 million in punitive damages.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco dismissed that judgment, saying the case was out of the Los Angeles court’s jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously last year that the case did fall within a federal court’s jurisdiction and ordered the appeals court to decide the case on its merits.

That was such an important victory for the rights of the nation’s federal courts, said professor Charles W. “Rocky” Rhodes, that he teaches it in his South Texas College of Law classes.

What happens next in the inheritance battle was put on hold after Smith was found Feb. 8 in a room at a hotel-casino on a Florida Indian reservation. Authorities said she had at least nine prescription drugs in her body and had died of an accidental overdose.

“After she passed away, the court of appeals entered an order staying all of the proceedings,” Brunstad said.

Neither he nor attorney Kent Richland, who argued Smith’s case before the Supreme Court, would even guess when proceedings might resume.

“Given the history of this case so far, I don’t think anyone can predict what is going to happen next,” Richland said. In the meantime, he said, he has files from the case stacked ceiling to floor against two walls of his Los Angeles office.

Nothing more can happen, the attorneys agreed, until someone is appointed to represent Smith’s estate in court.

Which is what makes the events unfolding in the Bahamas in the weeks ahead so important – not to mention so fascinating to seemingly anyone sitting in front of a TV.

“You know what is most amazing about this case? How riveting this is to the world?” asked Alexandra Leichter, a Beverly Hills attorney and family law expert who has been called on frequently to provide her take on the case.

“Here is a woman and what did she do? Did she fight against AIDS? Did she save children from a holocaust? Did she go and fight against land mines? Nothing. Just a pretty face with gum showing when she smiled.”

Then Leichter offered her prediction on the outcome of the custody case. She said Birkhead, the 34-year-old Los Angeles photographer who met Smith at a Kentucky Derby party in 2003, is the eventual winner.

“He is now in total, 100 percent control,” she said, adding the fact that DNA proved two weeks ago he is Dannielynn’s father will trump anyone else’s custody claim.

Not that he doesn’t have a few other little legal matters to straighten out before he can head home to California and fight on his daughter’s behalf for a share of Smith’s disputed inheritance. First among them is getting his name added to Dannielynn’s birth certificate.

After Smith dumped Birkhead last year for her lawyer, Howard K. Stern, she put Stern’s name on the girl’s birth certificate.

Stern, who is still living with Dannielynn in the Bahamas mansion he and Smith shared in the months before her death, has formed a partnership of sorts with Birkhead since the DNA results were released. He says he now supports him in the custody case.

Meanwhile, Arthur’s attorneys said this week they were still negotiating a possible custody sharing arrangement with Birkhead.

Also to be resolved is the status of a will Smith had drawn up in 2001 that named Stern executor of her estate. It leaves Smith’s assets to her son, Daniel, who died last year of a drug overdose. That means, said New York attorney Laurie S. Ruckel, an expert on estates and trusts, that whatever Smith left will almost certainly go to Dannielynn, her only surviving child.

But just what Smith left behind hasn’t been revealed.

“I couldn’t give you an eyeball figure,” Smith’s attorney, Ron Rale, said this week. “But it’s going to be determined.”

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