America’s highest court will soon enter the arena of lowbrow entertainment when ditzy former Playboy Playmate-cum-reality show spectacle Anna Nicole Smith goes to the Supreme Court to fight for a portion of her dead billionaire husband’s fortune. Smith, a former stripper whose real name is Vicky Lynn Marshall, has been involved in a legal battle for nearly ten years over the estate of her deceased husband, Texan oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II — whom she married in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89. Marshall died in 1995, only a year into their marriage, leaving behind a $1.6 billion fortune and prompting a bitter, long-lasting feud between Smith and Marshall’s son, Pierce Marshall.
Seeking a $464 million chunk of her husband’s money, Smith was awarded a smaller inheritance of $89 million by a California district court; that decision found that despite failing to write her into his will, Marshall would have wanted to provide for his young bride after his death. This victory was short-lived, however, as the younger Marshall took his stepmother back to court, and a Texas appeals court stripped Smith of any compensation. Now the TrimSpa celebrity spokeswoman is taking her case to Washington, where her landmark case will decide the future of billionaire octogenarian-marrying model-reality television stars everywhere.
