Anna Nicole Smith
A $500 million baby . . . maybe

Only 39 when she died in February of an accidental overdose, Anna Nicole Smith had not updated her 2001 will that named her son, Daniel, who had died of an accidental overdose several months earlier, as sole heir. Probate court will most certainly award her modest assets of roughly $700,000 to her only surviving child, daughter Dannielynn. As for her share of billionaire ex-husband J. Howard Marshall II’s estate, the court will likely name her daughter the rightful heir of close to $500 million.

But where that money ends up will depend on the man who controls it—either Dannielynn’s biological father, Larry Birkhead, or her mother’s lawyer and companion, Howard K. Stern, who is named as executor and is likely to be a trustee. Dannielynn’s financial future would have been safer if her mother’s will had spelled out full provisions for a trust, says Adam Streisand, a trusts-and-estates attorney in Los Angeles. Streisand has handled many estate disputes involving male celebrities who have omitted certain children from their wills, but the Smith case is virtually unprecedented. In most states, if a wealth holder wishes to prevent a biological child from inheriting assets, it must be stated in the will. Otherwise laws of intestacy will assume the child was omitted unintentionally. "That comes up often with men," Streisand says. "But you have to ask yourself why a woman would do that."

James Brown
Unclaimed souls

On top of six adult children who have filed suit against the trustees of James Brown’s estate for mismanagement, his death on Christmas Day last year left his longtime companion, Tomi Rae Hynie, facing a nasty and prolonged court battle. First, the trustees locked her out of the mansion the couple had shared on Beech Island, S.C. Then came the will that did not include their son, 6-year-old James Brown Jr., and further states: "Any person not provided for in this Will, my Irrevocable Trust or other such instrument, shall not have standing . . . as I herewith disclaim and disinherit such persons."

But as long as DNA proves James Brown Jr. is Brown’s son, intestacy is likely to grant the youngster a portion of the estate. Hynie will have a tougher time claiming the one-third to one-half due to her as spouse, because of the question of whether the couple was legally married. She was not divorced from a previous husband when they exchanged their vows. "South Carolina recognizes common-law marriages, and I don’t think there is any doubt they held themselves up as husband and wife," says Stephen Slotchiver, a Charleston, S.C., lawyer whom Hynie selected as the special legal guardian for her son. But if Brown and Hynie had renewed their vows legally, her claims would be all but airtight.

Robert Atkins
Living off the fat

Though the Atkins Diet doctor was reportedly planning to sell his company when he took a fatal fall on a New York sidewalk in 2003, he did not die cash-rich and left only a modest trust for his wife, Veronica, naming two of his business partners as trustees. When the partners sold the company, Veronica came into a $400 million windfall—and new "friends" surfaced. D. Clive Metz, a Miami entrepreneur who had met the couple briefly, convinced Veronica that he and his two partners would be the best trustees. Veronica and her new husband, Palm Beach socialite Alexis Mersentes, are now in court with the men they call the Three Musketeers, who have earned more than $10 million from the trust since 2004—with combined salaries that exceeded statutory limits on trustee commissions. According to Veronica’s attorneys, this is not a case of Mersentes trying to get his hands on the money, as the trustees and their lawyers claim.

But this situation was vulnerable to predators from the start, says Ed Koren, an estate lawyer with Holland & Knight in Tampa, Fla. "If you have a closely held business as your main asset, you probably want a trustee who knows a lot about the business, but doesn’t work for it," Koren says. "If you have a corporate fiduciary or bank as backup, you can still fire that trustee, but you’d have to replace it with another financial institution where the trust officers aren’t going to be taken by sweet talk."

Nina Wang
Feng shui and ill winds

Nina Wang, chair of real estate developer Chinachem Group in Hong Kong, was known for presiding in pigtails and miniskirts—and was worth an estimated $4 billion when she died of ovarian cancer last April at age 70. She earned much of her wealth the hard way. Her late husband, Teddy, was declared dead in 1999 after being kidnapped in 1990 for the second time in his life. Three different wills turned up, resulting in Wang and her father-in-law fighting a court battle that Wang won in 2005. No one could claim she didn’t know the importance of a clear will.

Nevertheless, since her death, two wills have appeared, one naming her charitable foundation as her major beneficiary, the other naming Chan Chun-chuen, a real estate developer and former feng shui fortune-teller to the stars. Her next of kin, a brother and two sisters (she had no children), have kept out of the public fray, but local media reports that they are determined to challenge Chan’s claim.

Like U.S. law, Hong Kong law would likely grant Wang’s fortune to her siblings if no one can produce a convincing will, in which case the foundation could lose out. Again, ironclad legal documents might have prevented this imbroglio. "You can try and admit a video to support the deceased’s intentions, or letters and memos, but it won’t stop people from coming forward if they think they have a case," says Michael Troth, head of Global Wealth Structuring at Citi Private Bank Asia Pacific and Middle East. He would not be surprised to see other claimants appear, he adds.

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