• 24
  • June
    2011

Is it an estate planning dream or a nightmare? The fight over the estate of the late oily tycoon J. Howard Marshall seems to be over, and the battle took so many years that the parties to the dispute are themselves the estates of the original litigants who have since also died.

The well-publicized fight was over the $1.6 billion fortune left by Marshall when he died in 1995. For a little over a year, the elderly Marshall was married to then 26-year-old former Playboy model and Guess Jeans model Anna Nicole Smith. Marshall's estate plan left his fortune in trust to his son from a previous marriage, E. Pierce Marshall. Smith disputed the validity of the estate plan, saying that the elder Marshall had planned to leave her $300 million.

Pierce Marshall denied that Smith was due anything from his father's estate that she had not already received.

The ensuing battles took place not only in probate court, but in bankruptcy court. Probate courts are state courts, and bankruptcy courts are federal, so each type of court is wary of deciding matters for the other type of court, especially since their decisions on these matters may turn out to be invalid because of a lack of jurisdiction in the matter more typical of the other court.

Florida contested will attorneys noted that it was exactly this dispute over jurisdiction that brought Smith's case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court, by a narrow margin, decided that court victories for Smith in bankruptcy court were not valid for jurisdictional reasons.

The Supreme Court justices never mentioned the names of Marshall or Smith, nor did they comment on the parties' notoriety. The court simply stuck to the rather mundane questions of procedure. But the result was a serious loss for Smith, or rather for her estate since she died of a drug overdose in 2007.

Pierce Marshall died in 2006. His widow has been pursuing the case on behalf of his estate. On Smith's side, her former boyfriend Howard K. Stern has been fighting on behalf of her estate for a greater share of the elder Marshall's fortune.

So, posthumously, Smith lost her fight for a larger share of the fortune. During the brief marriage, though, it is estimated she received around $7 million.

Source: CNN "High court rules against Anna Nicole Smith's estate" 6/23/2011