Claim of Paternity
When Smith died on February 8, 2007, Birkhead filed an emergency order to obtain custody of the child. He had the support of Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, in his claim that he was the father of Smith's then five-month-old daughter.
Although several men also claimed paternity (including Howard K. Stern, Mark Hatten, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, and Smith's former bodyguard, Alexander Denk), a DNA test provided by Michael L. Baird, proved that Birkhead had fathered Smith's infant daughter, then named Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern. Smith had claimed that her attorney and partner, Stern, was the father.
In April 2007, a Bahamian court ordered custody of Dannielynn to be transferred from Stern to Birkhead, who corrected her birth certificate to show him as father and renamed her "Dannielynn Hope Marshall Birkhead." Birkhead then refused to allow Arthur or any of Smith's family around Dannielynn.
Read more about this topic: Larry Birkhead
Famous quotes containing the word claim:
“I have been searching history to see if really a woman has any precedent to claim the right to have her rights, and I am compelled to say that we men are not so much ahead of women after all, and the only way we have kept our reputation up is by keeping her down—and don’t you forget it!”
—George E. Foster, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 38-41 (October 1886)