San Francisco– She’s back and ready to continue the fight. After a very rough few months in the Bahamas, ones which saw her give birth, lose her son, face paternity lawsuits, almost get evicted, and who knows what else, Anna Nicole Smith has returned to the United States. She flew in yesterday, a story broken by Entertainment Tonight, to meet with a federal mediator in order to determine what her share of her late husband’s estate should be. Who knows what other headlines will develop now that she’s back on US shores?
ET reported that Smith landed in San Francisco and went to the Ninth Circuit Federal Courthouse to meet with the mediator and discuss the vast fortune that J. Howard Marshall II left behind. She was accompanied by attorney and alleged father of her new child, Howard K. Stern, and wore sunglasses and a black suit. The late billionaire and husband of Smith supposedly left the TrimSpa model hundreds of millions of dollars when he died but it’s been tied up in legal proceedings.
In 1995, J. Howard Marshall III, who was sixty years older than his wife, Anna Nicole Smith, died and did not include the former Playboy Playmate in his official will. Smith alleged that Marshall intended to leave her a gift in the form of a special trust and it’s been bouncing around the courts for the last decade, getting all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court last February. The highest court in the land ruled that Smith had the right to pursue the case.
ABC News reported that Smith originally won a $474 million judgement that was cut to $89 million and then nothing before the Supreme Court saved the case. They ruled that only federal courts in California could deal with the Smith-Marshall case, nullifying a Texas state court ruling favor of the billionaire’s son.
Smith spoke to ET about her late husband last month, from the Bahamas, “”Howard [K. Stern] is the sweetest, nicest person I’ve ever met in my life besides my husband, J. Howard Marshall II. It’s like my husband sent him to me.”
Smith hasn’t left the Bahamas since the birth of Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, her daughter, in September. While Smith was recovering from childbirth she suffered the loss of her son Daniel in the maternity ward. It’s unclear if Anna Nicole Smith will deal with any of the paternity issues surrounding the birth of her daughter of whom Larry Birkhead claims he is the father.