Ex's Lawyer: Where's Anna's Decency?

Still not sure who to give that tie to on Father's Day?

A hearing was postponed Wednesday on whether to issue a court order compelling Anna Nicole Smith to return to California with her baby girl to submit to a paternity test. After meeting with attorneys from both sides in chambers, Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Gretchen Taylor issued a continuance for Oct. 26.

After the hearing, the attorney representing Smith's litigious ex-boyfriend, paparazzo Larry Birkhead, pleaded her client's case outside the courthouse, questioning Smith's sense of decency and calling upon her, as a mother, to do the so-called right thing.

"Anna Nicole Smith knows what it is to be a parent," lawyer Debra Opri said. "To love a child and to lose that child...[She] has now taken Larry Birkhead's baby girl--his daughter. Anna has told him he will never see his child againÂÂ?Anna has forced Larry Birkhead to fight for the rights he holds dear--to be a father to his child."

While it's relatively common to see a mother pursue a legal course of action to establish paternity, less frequently do you see wannabe dads taking the moms to court to prove a parent-child relationship.

"When you file a paternity suit it's certainly being filed for one or two reasons," said Douglas Wolf, a family attorney based in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. "From a mother's perspective, it's going to be to force a support order. From a father's perspective, he's not getting visitation rights" or he's trying to establish a custody arrangement.

"No question about it," Wolf said. "Normally you've got people running the other way."

Birkhead, however, is jumping headfirst into the fray.

In response to lawyer Howard K. Stern's headline-grabbing announcement on Larry King Live last week that he is the father of Smith's newborn daughter, Dannielynn Hope, Birkhead filed suit Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court and then appeared on MSNBC to discuss his actions. Smith, who has never publicly confirmed her relationship with the photographer, was served with papers that night in the Bahamas, where she has been staying since the Sept. 10 death of her son Daniel. The 20-year-old accidentally OD'd on a combination of methadone and antidepressants and suffered a fatal heart attack.

Opri was off to court today to demand that Smith be ordered to submit to paternity and drug tests, as per the allegations in her ex's petition--of which there were many, none of them flattering to either Smith or Stern.

"I ask this now. Where is this woman's decency?" Opri said. "Can Anna Nicole Smith not simply submit to the tests necessary to settle the question of who is that little girl's father once and for all? Can Anna Nicole Smith not allow Larry Birkhead the peace of mind in resolving the question of whether he is the father of this child?"

Well, theoretically she can, if she wants to stay in the Bahamas forever. Smith maintains a residence in California and, if Opri is correct in stating that Dannielynn was conceived there, the state has jurisdiction to get to the bottom of whom the baby's daddy is, despite the fact that the child was born in the Bahamas and that Smith became a citizen of the country in days before the birth.

Opri also stated--perhaps belatedly--that it's in the best interest of the child to let the courts, and not the media, decide what the proper course of action is.

Finally, something Smith and Stern's attorneys could get behind. Emphasizing that paternity proceedings are confidential under California law, Smith's lawyer Ron Rale told reporters that they wanted to "honor the dignity of the court, the dignity of Anna Nicole as the mother.

"She's grieving right now. It's not something that we want before the press."