Keeping Abreast
The words “probate exception” do not titillate. And yet a saucy, decade-long legal battle over a fortune of nearly half a billion dollars hinges on this clause, which deals with the boundaries between state and federal courts in estate disputes. At issue is whether Vickie Lynn Marshall, a former Playboy pin-up and exotic dancer better known as Anna Nicole Smith, will get anything from the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall, an oil tycoon with assets estimated at $1.6 billion. On May 1st, Ms Smith won an important victory. Although her inheritance remains uncertain, the United States Supreme Court (no less) unanimously ruled that she could pursue her case in federal court. One suspects the justices were enjoying themselves, for once.
The details of the case have kept the tabloids busy. Marshall met Ms Smith when he was wheeled into the Texas strip club where she was dancing. After a courtship of a few years, full of expensive gifts (such as $2m in jewellery) and pricier promises, the two were married in 1994. She was 26, he was 89. Fourteen months later, Marshall dropped dead of a heart attack, leaving nothing to Ms Smith in his will.
The dispute has seen the inside of five courthouses since 1995, when Ms Smith first sued Marshall's son, E. Pierce Marshall, in a Texas state court, accusing him of cutting her off from the estate. She insists that Marshall promised her half his fortune. His son, seething at what he considers Ms Smith's gold-digging (he calls her “Miss Cleavage”), argued that Marshall had already given her $6m in gifts and did not intend to leave her more. Ms Smith got nothing from her first lawsuit, but was awarded $475m in a federal bankruptcy ruling in California in 2000. A federal district court judge cut this award to $89m, and then a US appeals court ruled that the issue was not a federal matter.
The Supreme Court justices, who heard arguments in February, have not weighed in on the merits of Ms Smith's case. Indeed the buxom blonde, who sniffled disingenuously during the hearings, has hardly been a sympathetic figure. The court's opinion, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a technical one that measures the scope of the probate exception. It leaves to state courts the probate or annulment of a will and the administration of an estate. This puts Marshall's estate back into play, and ensures that bitter legal wrangling will stretch on for years.
posted by mcwads @ 7:50 PM
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