Custody Battle For Anna’s Baby Continues In Bahamas

NASSAU, Bahamas (February 26, 2007) — An ex-boyfriend of Anna Nicole Smith who claims to be the father of her baby girl said Monday he hopes to see the infant soon as he entered a Bahamian courthouse for a three-way custody battle.

“I hope to get to see her and have her soon,” Larry Birkhead told reporters outside the Supreme Court building.

Others expected to seek custody in the closed session are Smith’s estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, and Smith’s companion, Howard K. Stern, who is listed as the baby’s father on the birth certificate.

Arthur arrived after Birkhead in a white limousine. Asked why Arthur deserved custody, her attorney Deborah Rose said simply: “She’s the grandmother.”

Dannielynn Smith, who was born in the Bahamas on Sept. 7, is staying at a gated, waterfront mansion in Nassau where Smith lived with Stern until the former Playboy Playmate died of unknown causes in Florida on Feb. 8.

Arthur has said she could provide a more stable home than Stern and should therefore be awarded custody of the baby, who could inherit a fortune. Smith had been fighting for a share of the estimated $500 million estate of her husband, the Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, since his death in 1995.

Stern returned to Nassau from Florida over the weekend but was not seen outside the courthouse.

Thomas Evans, a prominent Bahamas attorney, said there is no specific provision in Bahamian law for a paternity claim based on DNA. The court could determine that any of those seeking to be the guardian of Dannielynn — or even another party, including the country’s Department of Social Services — should have custody, based on the best interests of the child, he said.

In another Nassau courtroom Monday, a separate hearing was scheduled in a dispute over the waterfront mansion, known as “Horizons.” G. Ben Thompson, a South Carolina developer who briefly dated Smith, says he advanced her money for the $900,000 house but she did not honor an agreement to pay the mortgage. She had claimed the house was a gift.

An attorney for Thompson, Godrey Pinder, said regardless of any court decision, he would not try to immediately evict Stern out of concern for Dannielynn.

“We want to be concerned about the baby,” he said. “We don’t want to hurt her, so whatever is reasonable.”

A court-appointed advocate for Dannielynn decided last week that Anna Nicole Smith should be buried in the Bahamas, beside the unmarked grave of her 20-year-old son Daniel, who died while visiting her in the island chain last year.

But Arthur wants Smith buried in her native Texas. She asked an appeals court in Florida on Monday to overturn a judge’s decision that authorized the advocate to decide where to bury Smith. Broward County Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin had declined to reconsider his ruling Monday morning, saying he wanted to preserve Smith’s dignity by having the funeral occur as quickly as possible.

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