Anna Nicole Smith married oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall when she was 26 and he was 89. Her highly publicized second marriage to J. Howard Marshall resulted in speculation that she married the octogenarian for his money, which she denied. After J. Howard Marshall’s death, Anna Nicole Smith began a lengthy legal battle over a share of his estate. Within weeks of J. Howard Marshall’s death, one of his sons, E. Pierce Marshall, disputed her claim for half of her late husband’s US $1.6 billion estate. Anna Nicole Smith reportedly accused Pierce Marshall of altering the will. Her case, Marshall v. Marshall, reached the U.S. Supreme Court on a question of federal jurisdiction, and again on a question of bankruptcy court authority. The circumstances surrounding the case date back nearly two decades.
A federal judge is set to decide whether to impose sanctions of up to $44 million against the estate of Anna Nicole Smith’s former stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, the son of Smith’s late husband, in a claim he originally filed, according to the National Law Journal.
U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote in a tentative order that he had several “open questions” left unresolved as to the scope of sanctions he ordered last year against E. Pierce Marshall’s estate. E. Pierce Marshal died from what was reported as a “brief and extremely aggressive infection.”
Smith reportedly never lived with him, never made love with him, or kissed him on the mouth more than ten times. Anna Nicole Smith, however, maintained that she loved her husband, and age did not matter to her. Fourteen months after his marriage to Smith, J. Howard Marshall died in Houston at age ninety, on August 4, 1995.
Judge Carter issued a tentative order that raised many questions about the scope of what he could issue in terms of sanctions, especially given the jurisdictional problems that surround the case.
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