In the drama that is still the Anna Nicole Smith saga, one can’t really be surprised by anything anymore. Howard K Stern has sex with ocean mammals? Fine. Virgie Arthur is actually a pair of conjoined twins with only one visible head? Totally cool. Dannielynn’s already getting $200,000 legal bills? Well of course. The wee one’s trust fund is being charged that preposterous amount by her guardian ad litem Richard Milstein. Milstein worked for Dannielynn for about 2 – 3 weeks (depending on who you ask). He represented her interests in the Florida court after Anna Nicole Smith died, and eventually won custody of Anna Nicole’s body, since Dannielynn was ruled to be the closest relative. But since she was a baby, that meant her guardian ad litem got to choose where Smith was buried. He seemed to do a good job, and chose to have Smith buried next to her also recently deceased son Daniel in the Bahamas.

Case closed, right? Well not so much, because it seems that Milstein wants to be compensated about $200,000 for his work. He says it took not just him but five members of his office to do all the work required in the case, and that they had to devote themselves entirely to it, including travel to and from the Bahamas. That’s basically billing $900 an hour for legal work she never was able to request. Unless sucking on a binky is some type of indication one way or the other, and I just don’t know it.

“‘It’s outrageous,’ said Larry Birkhead’s attorney Nancy Hass, who along with a lawyer for Howard K. Stern has filed a complaint in Broward County objecting to the request. ‘I’m a guardian ad litem, too, and I always reduce my fees when I deal with children,’ Hass told the Palm Beach Post Monday. ‘A lot of work produced [by Milstein] was unnecessary.’ Milstein, who won custody of Smith’s body and adhered to the late model’s unwritten wish to be buried in the Bahamas next to her son Daniel, maintains that his request is more than fair.

“‘This representation required the guardian ad litem to devote significantly all of his professional and personal time and attention to the interests of Dannielynn for a period in excess of two weeks,’ he states in his petition. ‘The three weeks of work entailed the work of five people, not just myself, in order to handle the multiple details involved in handling the trial and funeral arrangements,’ Milstein wrote in an email to the Post. Echoed Robert Zinn, president of Milstein’s firm, Akerman Senterfitt: ‘We believe there is no basis whatsoever for the objections to our invoices, given the complexity of the issues, the large number of interested parties and the extremely short time.’

“‘That’s $900 an hour,’ [Krista] Barth [Hass and Stern's attorney] told the Post. ‘People believe the baby is rich. Couldn’t be further from the truth. Mr. Milstein even charged for another lawyer at his firm to go to Anna’s funeral.’ Although Dannielynn stands to inherit up to $500 million if the decade-long battle between Smith’s estate and that estate of her late husband, billionaire tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, is decided in Smith’s favor, the reality-TV star was worth only about $710,000 when she died.”

[From E! News]

When Barth and Hass responded to Milstein’s bill in an official complaint, they also suggested that Virgie Arthur should be responsible for part of Milstein’s bill, since she’s the one who initiated the legal proceedings over custody of Smith’s body. Her lawyer, Stephen Tunstall, said that was ridiculous, but he agreed that Milstein’s bill was excessive. I would love it if Arthur had to pay some of that bill. Any decent mother knows her daughter should be buried next to her grandson. Why would a good mother try to prevent that? Because the crazy lady wants money and attention. I think it’d be a little bit of justice if Arthur had to fork over the cash, instead of Dannielynn.

Virgie Arthur visited Anna Nicole and her son Daniel’s grave to mark the first anniversary of his death. The anniversary of his death is the day after kid sister Dannielynn’s birthday, and Virgie is upset no one from her side of the family was invited, saying “there wasn’t anybody there from Vickie’s [Anna Nicole's birth name was Vickie Lynn Hogan] side of the family”.

Larry Birkhead hit back.

“She doesn’t want to be a grandmother, she wants to be a money manager,” he said. “She can continue to play poor-pitiful-me games to anyone who’ll listen, I’m not buying it.

“Dannielynn has [paternal] grandmothers who are all supportive, you don’t see them dragging me through every courthouse.”

Birkhead also told E! Online that Arthur had ample opportunities to get to know her granddaughter in the wake of his winning custody this spring, but she didn’t seem nearly as interested when there wasn’t a video camera documenting her grandmotherly intentions.

“She stood me up for a Sunday visitation,” he said. “I waited all day, and she didn’t show up or call. Then a few weeks later, I get a note: ‘How’s the baby? Is she getting her first tooth?’

“She had two teeth when she was sitting in front of her in the lawyer’s office. A good grandmother would remember whether her granddaughter’s got teeth or not. She’d also remember to call and come over for a visitation that she scheduled…She can’t remember to call me for visitation, but she can remember to file papers in the courthouse about me.”

E! Online

Virgie also claimed to be the only one to visit the graves of Anna Nicole and grandson Daniel on the anniversary, but Anna’s other ex Howard K. Stern had this to say in response.

“I visited Anna and Daniel twice yesterday under the cover of darkness because I did not want the media to capture my private moments with loved ones. In the early morning, I brought two baskets of flowers from Dannielynn, myself, and others. When I visited again late at night, I found plastic flowers drilled into the ground next to our flowers.

I did not want to take pictures or release any statement concerning my visits. However, Anna’s birth mother brought Splash News with her to the cemetery (or was it the other way around?) and then claimed in an interview that nobody visited Anna and Daniel.

Unfortunately, I have learned to anticipate this type of exploitative expression of alleged love and took the necessary precautions. I sincerely hope that Splash News has the decency not to make this a pattern for all future anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays.

As in the past, I am not profiting from these pictures or this statement in any manner.”

TMZ

The man certainly can make a powerful statement. No wonder Anna Nicole wanted him for a lawyer.

This saga seems like it’s going to go on forever. While Larry Birkhead doesn’t seem shy about making money from Dannielynn’s pictures, at least he isn’t as crazy as Virgie. This is the woman who has two children named Junior, one with her stepbrother, and just doesn’t seem to be able to accept her loss of cash - whoops, I mean custody - gracefully. If she just acted like a civilized person she probably wouldn’t have visitation rights, she could just visit the kid like a regular grandmother.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Here are pictures of the cemetery where Anna is buried, which were published earlier. Thanks to FindaGrave.com. The above picture is an older one of her grave.