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The biggest news item of recent days has been the death of Anna Nicole Smith. As many remember, she was engaged in a messy probate battle of the Will of her late husband J. Howard Marshall. That battled raged in the Harris County probate court for nearly 6 months, and it definitely left its mark on the Houston probate process. Now, in the wake of Smith’s death, questions have arisen about the contents of her Will, the circumstances surround her death, where she will be buried, etc.

Because Smith won her battle before the U.S. Supreme Court in her late husband’s estate, she may be entitled to receive $500 million or more from his estate. Now that Smith has died, the beneficiaries under her Will stand to inherit all of that money. Of course, reports have raged lately as to the identity of the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s only living child. Given the large amount of money at stake, the potential fathers are all fighting as hard as possible to be recognized as the father so that they not only get control of the child, but also get control of Anna Nicole’s fortune.

The Medical Examiner and the Courts in Florida have taken great pains to make sure that enough DNA samples are preserved to enable them to perform the appropriate DNA testing to determine the child’s father. This is a battle that will rage long and hard, but honestly, this is a fight that should be very easy to resolve. In a very short, one-day test, the doctors will be able to determine with 99.9% accuracy who the father was. More importantly, the doctors will also be able to rule out all of the potential fathers who actually are not the father.

It will be interesting to see how this case unfolds in the media.