Anna Nicole Smith’s former boyfriend to be left out of loop on estate talks
CNS
November 26, 2010
Beverly Hills Courier
http://67.59.172.92/article/Local_News/Local_News/Anna_Nicole_Smiths_former_boyfriend_to_be_left_out_of_loop_on_estate_talks/72945
A former boyfriend of Anna Nicole Smith is not entitled to notice of court hearings concerning the disposition of her estate by the one-time Playboy Playmate’s personal lawyer, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael I. Levanas on Wednesday granted a motion by lawyers for Howard K. Stern that frees them from having to notify Mark Hatten and his attorney, Kevin F. Bernie, about future hearings.
Stern is the administrator of Smith’s estate.
Levanas found that Hatten and Bernie are “not interested parties in these proceedings.”
Bernie could not be immediately reached for comment.
Hatten is serving a six-year prison sentence at the Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga for threatening Smith with a knife and assaulting one of her neighbors.
He was acquitted of stalking Smith.
Hatten and Smith dated in 2000. He lodged a notice of intent to file a creditor’s claim against her estate in October 2007, eight months after Smith’s death in Florida at age 39 of an overdose of prescription drugs.
According to papers filed by Stern’s lawyers in support of their motion, Hatten and Bernie have filed requests for notice of the estate hearings “with the intention of harassing (Stern) or his counsel and attempting to impede the administration of (Smith’s) estate.”
Hatten never filed a creditor’s claim in the case, Stern’s lawyers say.
They claim his motives are financial.
“Mr. Hatten has used the request for special notice to impede the administration of the estate, including … repeated calls to (Stern’s) lawyers, frivolous objections to court filings and harassment of (Stern) in this and other estate-related proceedings,” Stern’s lawyers say in their court papers. “It has become burdensome and costly to continue to notify Mr. Hatten and his counsel of the estate proceedings.”
A federal appeals court ruled in March that Smith’s estate has no claim on the fortune left by her late billionaire oilman husband J. Howard Marshall.
However, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the estate’s appeal of the decision by U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal.
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