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Anna Nicole Smith Goes to Washington.
SPEA’s Lenkowsky Reacts

The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of Anna Nicole Smith fighting in a federal court for a share of her late husband's will. SPEA Professor Leslie Lenkowsky explains how the decision could affect inheritances and bequests to charities.

Expert perspective: Former Playboy model, stripper, and E! TV personality Anna Nicole Smith got what she wanted from the United States Supreme Court. But as a result, inheritances and bequests to charities—expected to amount to trillions of dollars in coming decades as wealthy “baby boomers” pass from the scene—are now likely to face new and unprecedented challenges.

Ms. Smith, whose legal name is Vickie Lynn Marshall, was contesting a decision by a state probate court in Texas that she was not entitled to receive any money from the estate of her late husband, multimillionaire oilman J. Howard Marshall II, whom she married a year before his death at the age of 90. Her lawyers successfully persuaded a federal court in California to declare that her ex-husband’s son, E. Pierce Marshall, had improperly deprived her of her inheritance, which created the basis for her appeal to the Supreme Court.

In 1946, the last time it reviewed the issue, the Supreme Court, citing precedents going back to English law, concluded that decisions by state probate courts, which have jurisdiction over the disposition of wills and bequests, were exempt from review in federal courts. However, in this case, it decided that federal courts did have the authority to determine if the younger Marshall had interfered with Ms. Smith’s right to claim a portion of the estate, a “tort” under federal law. How badly damaged she was by his actions remains to be decided, but in earlier proceedings, Ms. Smith had been awarded $88 million by a federal district court and $474 million in a bankruptcy court.

Although the Marshalls will undoubtedly continue to battle over the amount of the settlement, the Supreme Court’s decision opens the door to new legal challenges, including to charitable bequests where one or another party can claim to have been illegally deprived of rights to a portion of an estate. Apart from the expenses and nastiness certain to be involved, the potential involvement of federal courts in an arena in which state courts have long held sway portends a higher level of uncertainty in what many had expected would be a golden era of philanthropy.

The SPEA Toolkit: Leslie Lenkowsky is a professor of Public Affairs and Philanthropic Studies as well as director of Graduate Programs for the Center on Philanthropy. He formerly served as the CEO for the Corporation for National and Community Service—Lenkowsky was nominated by President Bush for the position and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in October 2001.

Click here to read more about Professor Lenkowsky.

Click here to read more about the ruling.

Click here to read the full opinion from the Supreme Court.