Clarifying the legal mess Anna Nicole left behind

Amongst the places I am licensed to practice law are The Bahamas and the United States. Therefore, ever since Anna Nicole Smith died, I’ve been fielding questions – from the sublime to the ridiculous – about what will happen to her baby and the hundreds of millions to which she claimed she was entitled.

Unfortunately, almost all of the questions were premised on faulty media reports surrounding Anna Nicole’s death. And the most egregious of these were reports concerning the misguided motivation of all of the men swarming like bees to a honeycomb claiming to be her baby Dannielynn’s Daddy. Because gossip peddlers masquerading as news reporters – especially from UK tabloids and U.S. Cable stations (including CNN and FOX News) – have given so many people the impression that whoever proves to be the Daddy will gain immediate control of a $400 million trust fund in Dannielynn’s name. But nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, when Anna Nicole’s 90-year old husband, Texas oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall, died in 1995 – after only 7 months of connubial bliss – he left her none of his estimated $1.6 billion estate in his will. And, why should he. After all, Marshall probably thought he paid his 26-year old stripper of a wife rather handsomely for all of the services she rendered during their marriage.

Nevertheless, Anna Nicole challenged his will by filing bankruptcy and claiming that she could not pay her debts because she became a spendthrift in reliance on a verbal promise she claims Marshall made to leave her half of his fortune. And, California being the most indulgent legal jurisdiction in the entire world, a bankruptcy judge there awarded her $474 million based on this improbable claim to help her pay her creditors, including the nanny of her son (from her first marriage to a short-order cook) who sued Anna Nicole for forcing her to have lesbian sex and was awarded almost $1 million.

But Marshall’s legitimate heirs appealed and – following a series of court proceedings and rulings over the past decades, including a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court – Anna Nicole’s $474 million was reduced to $88 million, and then to $0. And, as proceedings stand, her posthumous digging for his millions must now continue back in a Texas federal court, where the chances of anyone who picks up her shovel finally striking gold are slim to none!

Therefore, it’s only chasing a fool’s promise if these men, including the mercenary and very suspicious Howard K. Stern, think that – by claiming Dannielynn as theirs – they will get their hands on the millions that Anna Nicole worked so hard to inherit.

That said, the entire legal hullabaloo surrounding Stern’s efforts to keep Dannielynn ensconced in the bosom of a Bahamian Mammy (who happens to be the mother of the minister of immigration) will be resolved as soon her paternity is established. Then I suspect the world will learn not only that Stern is not her biological father, but also that he has no cognizable parental rights under Bahamian law because he and Anna Nicole were never legally married. Indeed, Bahamian authorities will order him to hand Dannielynn over to her legitimate father and that will be the end of her life as a refugee in The Bahamas.

Alas, it’s unfortunate that so much idle speculation and sheer lunacy has been reported as relevant to the tragic mess Anna Nicole left behind. And, in this regard, it would be remiss of me not to condemn the media platform that was laid at the feet of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s Viagra-popping husband, Prince Frederick (I-paid-good-money-for-this-title) von Anhalt, to tell the world about his alleged 10-year affair with Anna Nicole and declare that he is “one of 20 men” who could be Dannielynn’s Daddy.

(It is noteworthy, however, that the most intriguing contender for this dubious honor is none other than the deceased Marshall himself – based on reports that Anna Nicole had herself inseminated with his frozen sperm to conceive Dannielynn. Which, of course, raises the ironic prospect that Dannielynn would suddenly become more entitled to hundreds of millions from his estate than her mother ever was. But as miracles go, I think we should wait for scientific confirmation of this one. After all, I doubt Marshall was capable of getting it up, let alone shooting off enough to preserve for this shrewd purpose.)

I don’t know what else to say about the aforementioned Stern except to note the even greater irony looming that the same Bahamian laws he attempted to use to shield Anna Nicole and him from the long-arm of American law may eventually seal his doom if the inquest (scheduled for 26 March) finds that he supplied the drugs that led to her son Daniel’s death. And what poetic justice that would be for him to finally get the Bahamian permanent residency he so coveted – by being remanded to our notorious Fox Hill Prison for life.