Smith and Marshall were at war even before J. Howard Marshall, her husband and Pierce Marshall’s father, died at the age of 90 in 1995. An oil baron whose holdings are now estimated to be worth as much as $1.6 billion, J. Howard had met Anna when she was dancing in a Houston strip club four years earlier. He was in a wheelchair and was depressed by the deaths of his wife, Bettye, and his mistress, Diane (Lady) Walker. An aide thought Anna Nicole could cheer J. Howard up, and she did. Within months Marshall was alternately proposing to either marry Smith or adopt her, and their wedding took place in 1994. As J. Howard became increasingly feeble, Pierce Marshall moved to take control of his father’s finances. When Marshall died, he and Anna Nicole fought for control of his ashes, eventually dividing them and holding separate funerals. (At her service, Smith wore a low-cut white wedding dress.)

Now the two are fighting bitterly over Marshall’s vast wealth. Surprisingly, this battle is currently being waged in a downtown Los Angeles federal bankruptcy court. In 1996, Smith filed for bankruptcy in L.A., where she lives, after she lost an $850,000 judgment brought against her by a female former assistant alleging sexual harassment. Pierce had already filed his own suit against Anna Nicole–for defamation–and subsequently took his case to Los Angeles. The defamation claim made Pierce a party to Anna Nicole’s bankruptcy case, so when she countersued for a share of J. Howard’s estate, the bankruptcy judge decided to settle the whole thing.

Smith now says she deserves fully half the Marshall fortune, even though she is not mentioned in J. Howard’s will. Pierce is the sole heir, and his attorneys insist that J. Howard left her out of the will for a reason: “Dad’s intention was to take care of Vickie while he was alive,” Pierce Marshall told Newsweek, “and he did that in very generous fashion, providing her with millions of dollars in cash, jewels and houses.” Even if the judge rejects Smith’s demand for half the estate, some legal observers say she’ll wind up with at least several million dollars. “I have a lot of faith that things will work out,” she said. If she wins big, she says, she plans to remake some of Marilyn Monroe’s famous films–with herself as the star, of course.