FORT LAUDERDALE Anna Nicole Smith wanted to be buried in California near her idol Marilyn Monroe, her mother acknowledged at a hearing yesterday.

Virgie Arthur's admission could sabotage her legal fight to have the starlet buried in her native Texas.

"Wherever the stars are buried, that's where she wanted to be buried," Arthur told the Florida hearing Smith had said to her about 10 years ago.

Arthur is fighting Howard Stern, the lawyer who had been Smith's boyfriend for many years and who wants to bury the former model in the Bahamas with her son, Daniel, who died in September, aged 20, of apparently drug-related causes. Arthur said she believed any mother would want to be buried with her children, but she wants to exhume the son and bury him in Texas too.

Smith, 39, died on February 8 in a Florida hotel. Bringing urgency to the case was a warning from a medical examiner that her body will soon be too decomposed for viewing. Judge Larry Seidlin promised a ruling by Friday.

The Florida hearing is just part of the legal battle around Smith. In California, a judge is trying to determine who fathered her five-month-old daughter, Dannielynn, who could inherit millions, depending on how Smith's estate is divided. Her millionaire husband left a £250m fortune.-AP