A Florida judge added more uncertainty to the paternity battle over former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith's baby yesterday when he said he wasn't sure he had jurisdiction over the case.
Broward County Family Court Judge Lawrence Korda said the Bahamas, where the former Playmate's five-month-old daughter, Dannielynn, was born, was probably the proper venue for deciding who fathered the child and who should have custody.
The hearing came a day after the melodramatic end of televised hearings in which another judge handed over Smith's remains for burial to the court-appointed guardian of her baby. The guardian decided she should be buried in the Bahamas.
Smith's mother filed a motion yesterday to suspend that ruling, but no decision had been made by late in the afternoon, nor was there any sign of a promised appeal to a higher court.
An official at the local medical examiner's office said it was unlikely Smith's body would be moved this weekend.
Judge Korda did not issue any ruling after hearing pleas from lawyers for Larry Birkhead, an ex-boyfriend of Anna Nicole's who claims to be Dannielynn's biological father, to take charge of the case and order a DNA test on the baby.
"I have a big question about whether I have jurisdiction," he said at the end of a hearing in his chambers in Fort Lauderdale. "I don't think that I have jurisdiction."
Judge Korda did not say when he would rule. But an assistant, Susan Burrell Moss, said a decision was unlikely before late next week.
Earlier, the judge said: "This is clear. The Bahamas appears to have substantial jurisdiction," noting that the child was born and lives in the Atlantic island chain, parts of which are just off Florida's east coast. The identity of Dannielynn's father has been in question since before Smith died on February 8th at a Florida casino hotel.
Smith's estate could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars one day if it prevails in a decade-long court battle to inherit the wealth of her late husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. The baby's guardian, Miami attorney Richard Milstein, decided Smith should be buried in the Bahamas, next to her dead son, Daniel.
But as preparations for the funeral proceeded, lawyers turned to Judge Korda to clarify a muddled paternity battle. Birkhead attended the hearing, but Howard K. Stern, Smith's longtime partner who is listed on the child's birth certificate as the father, and Smith's estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, the other prominent figures in the legal tug-of-war, were absent.
Attorneys for Mr Birkhead, a photographer who sued in California to have himself declared Dannielynn's father, asked Judge Korda to bring the paternity case to Florida and to order DNA testing on Dannielynn.
"The reason we're here today is because Anna Nicole's remains are here and her DNA is here," Debra Opri, Mr Birkhead's lawyer, told the judge.
Mr Birkhead's lawyers say Smith moved to the Bahamas to evade the paternity fight, which could also determine who will one day control Smith's estate. "This is about Anna Nicole Smith running from Larry Birkhead," Mr Birkhead lawyer Susan Brown said. "She was avoiding this test in her life and unfortunately they are still avoiding it."