ANNA NICOLE \nLOS ANGELES - Playboy Playmate of the Year 1992 Anna Nicole Smith is in two courts at once in her bid to prove that being left out of her late husband's will was fraud, ABC News is reporting.
Smith - an actress and a top model whose 1950s-pinup looks once helped land her into the Playboy realm as well as a Guess jeans ad campaign - claims she was promised half her late husband's estate (at least $535 million the estimated share) but has since fallen into bankruptcy after going all but penniless.
Smith married oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II in 1994, but a codicil to his will showed up three weeks later giving control of his entire estate to his 60-year-old son Pierce.
An attorney for Smith claimed in pre-trial discussions Monday the codicil was fraudulent. "(Marshall) couldn't read and documents had to be read to him," attorney Philip Boesch, Jr. tells ABC News. He charges Marshall's company, run by his son, "had a rubber stamp" to duplicate the billionaire's signature.
Smith's attorneys are also challenging the codicil in court in Houston, which held a separate hearing Monday. Attorneys there for Pierce Marshall asked a probate judge to hand down an injunction against the Los Angeles proceedings, claiming Texas has sole jurisdiction in the case.
A trial of Smith's bankruptcy case is expected to last two weeks at least, ABC says, and was to begin Wednesday afternoon. The Houston judge doesn't expect a decision in his court until January, while in Los Angeles federal bankruptcy judge Samuel L. Bufford noted Texas's primary jurisdiction but added there are issues in the case possibly "on the fringe" and under his court's jurisdiction, ABC says.
Bufford had earlier declared the younger Marshall in contempt of court for failing to deliver subpoenaed documents.
Meanwhile, ABC also says another son, J. Howard Marshall III, disinherited in the 1980s in a family dispute, is set to appear as a witness for Smith.
Smith's attorney's brief says she was working in a strip club to support her then-five year old son, Daniel, when she met Marshall in 1991. The brief also notes Marshall's wife and longtime mistress had both died earlier that year.
