Anna Nicole's mother appeals ruling
Anna Nicole Smith’s estranged mother today asked a Florida appeals court to overturn a judge’s decision over who controls where the starlet should be buried.
Lawyers for Virgie Arthur want the 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach to reconsider Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin’s tearful ruling on Thursday that the attorney for the centrefold’s infant daughter had the rights to decide burial plans. That attorney said Smith should be laid to rest next to her son in the Bahamas.
Arthur wants Smith buried in her native Texas, while the centrefold’s boyfriend, Howard Stern, testified last week that she wanted to be buried in the Bahamas.
Arthur filed an emergency motion on Friday asking Seidlin to reconsider his decision, but he did not rule on that. That prompted today’s legal action.
In the court filing, Arthur’s lawyer, Roberta Mandel, said the ruling was an inconvenience because the mother “will have to have a passport and round-trip airplane tickets and several thousand dollars to even visit or put flowers on (Smith’s) grave”.
Outside the court, Mandel said Arthur was willing to take the fight to the state Supreme Court if necessary.
Arthur’s lawyers argue in the filing that she was Smith’s next of kin and “the legally-recognised person” to get custody of the body.
“This mother is a mother who deserves the right to bury her child,” Mandel said. “The trial court treated her as though she was nothing.”
Stern lawyer Ron Rale said that Smith’s mother should let her daughter’s wish be granted.
“I believe the testimony was clear where Anna Nicole wanted to be buried, and anything that obstructs that, to complete her wishes as soon as possible, is sad,” Rale said.
Richard Milstein, the court-appointed attorney for the five-month-old daughter Dannielynn, did not immediately return a phone message, and neither did the public relations firm representing him.
He said on Saturday that the funeral would not take place before tomorrow.
Seidlin gained national attention with his one-liners and weeping decision on the burial.
Today he was in his chambers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but he declined to comment through his assistant.
Smith died in a Florida hotel on February 8, sparking legal disputes in Florida, California and the Bahamas.
A private hearing in the Bahamas to determine Dannielynn’s guardianship was expected to resume today between Arthur and Stern, who is listed as the father on the birth certificate.
The judge in that case has barred Stern from taking the girl out of the Bahamas pending a custody ruling.
Stern and two other men claim they are Dannielynn’s father.
Los Angeles-based photographer Larry Birkhead 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.
A medical examiner has yet to decide on the cause of death for the 39-year-old blonde B-list star.
Toxicology reports could take up to two more weeks to come back, according to Broward County’s medical examiner.
Smith’s life had long been fodder for tabloids and paparazzi. The voluptuous blonde married Texas oil tycoon Howard Marshall II in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. The reality TV star had been fighting his family over his estimated $500m (€380m) fortune since his death in 1995.
