U.S. & World

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (CBS News) ― Anna Nicole Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, took the stand Wednesday as the battle over the model's remains continues.

Arthur said that after her grandson's death she predicted that her daughter would die. Now she says she fears for the wellbeing of her granddaughter, Dannielynn.

"I'm afraid for her life as well. Please help us," she said, wiping away tears.

During her testimony, Stern's lawyer asked Arthur if she sold a video of Daniel Smith's memorial in the Bahamas for $12,500.

Arthur said she didn't receive any money from any "news place." She said the only person who had profited from her daughter was Smith's partner, Howard K. Stern.

Arthur later said she did an interview with "Entertainment Tonight" and was not paid for it. "He's the one that's getting the money. I'm not," Arthur said, pointing to Stern.

Earlier in the testimony, Arthur said she flew to the Bahamas to see her grandson's grave and videotaped the site for family. Arthur said family pooled money together for the trip.

Stern's attorney alluded that the trip was paid for by a news outlet.

Arthur explained that she hadn't seen her daughter since 1995 or 1996 because, "she was surrounded by people … she was on drugs."

She said she wanted to bring her daughter's body and grandson's body to Texas. She said the Bahamas was "not his home, it's not Vicki's home," Arthur said.

Judge Larry Seidlin started off proceedings Wednesday with a discussion with Arthur about her former job as a deputy in a Texas sheriff's department.

Stern and her estranged mother are in a Florida court arguing what to do with her remains, while another hearing in California deals with questions about the paternity of the former centerfold's infant daughter.

A coroner said Tuesday that despite being embalmed, Smith's body is deteriorating "much faster than expected."

During a Tuesday hearing on what to do with her remains, Broward County Medical Examiner Dr. Joshua Perper said via telephone that embalmers who embalmed Smith's body this weekend advised the viewing should be done this week.

"A delay in the next week might create a problem and the face of the deceased might show color changes," Perper said.

Stern was on the witness stand when Perper's call interrupted the hearing. Stern looked upset, lowering his head on his clasped hands as Perper's voice was heard in the court over a speaker phone.

The hearing finished for the day by 5 p.m. and resumed Wednesday morning.

Under direct testimony Tuesday afternoon, Stern said he and Smith chose a commitment ceremony over a legal wedding because he was concerned about what people would think.

"Anna wanted our marriage to be a legal marriage," Stern said. "I was concerned that people would think that I was making a run for her money."

After the mysterious death of Smith's 20-year-old son, Stern said he was also concerned that if he married Smith, people would think they did it so they wouldn't have to testify against one another in court.

"Upon the advice of counsel, we didn't want to give any perception of wrongdoing," said Stern. "A coroner early on said the death was under suspicious circumstances, but later retracted that."

Stern said he later found out that his lawyer gave him the wrong advice, because under Bahamian law a husband and wife would still have to testify because Daniel's death happened before their marriage.

Stern's attorney also played raw footage of an interview with Stern and Smith from "Entertainment Tonight." In the October interview, Smith said she was upset that her mother publicly accused her and Stern of killing Daniel.

"First of all, she's not my mother, she's my birth mother," Smith said. "Second of all, she doesn't know me and she doesn't know my son. She hasn't seen my son since probably he was 5 years old."

Smith also said that she would never allow her mother near her daughter, Dannielynn. "I would never speak to her again, ever," she said. "She won't touch my child."

According to Stern, she was adamant about burying her son in the Bahamas, where he died just days after Smith's daughter was born there in September.

"Anna and Daniel were inseparable. Daniel was without question the most important person in Anna's life," Stern told Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin.

At Daniel's funeral, "she said 'if Daniel has to be buried, I want to be buried with him,' " Stern said.

Stern said that her son's death in September forever changed Smith. "From the day Daniel died, in a lot of ways, Anna was never the same … she initially would not accept that Daniel was gone," he said.

Without written proof of Smith's own wishes, Seidlin is forced to hear testimony from those who claim to know what Smith wanted.

Stern said that Smith had always talked about dying young and that, before her son's death in September, she had wanted to be buried near Marilyn Monroe.

"She was pretty much my whole world," Stern said of the model, with whom he said he had a working and intimate relationship. "She was my best friend, my love, the mother of my daughter … my world."

Stern said he and Smith began an intimate relationship in 2000 but that it was not exclusive.

Arthur wants Smith brought home to her native Texas, insisting that despite their estrangement, she has the right to bury her own daughter, not a man to whom Smith wasn't even married.

In Los Angeles, Stern's lawyers also were arguing the paternity issue Tuesday with attorneys for Smith's ex-companion, Larry Birkhead, who says he fathered the girl. That hearing was closed to the public.

Frederic von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, has filed a separate paternity challenge to Stern's claim.

At the Florida hearing, Seidlin first suggested to lawyers that he needed to know who the father was in order to decide the burial issue.

The judge asked Stern, to write the infant's name on a white poster board to illustrate his point. "In the center of this maze is Dannielynn," Seidlin said. He asked the court to consider, "What is in her best interests?"

Ron Rale, an attorney for Smith who also is representing Stern in his paternity case, said the baby's paternity is irrelevant to the burial question.

"You want to have your cake and eat it," Seidlin shot back.

But after a brief private conference with all sides, he said he was going to try to answer the burial question without knowing that.

"It would help the court if I knew who the natural father is to speak on behalf of Dannielynn," Seidlin said. "Right now, the moment's not right."

Since Smith's death Feb. 8 in Florida, the baby has been living with Stern in the Bahamas. The cause of Smith's death is under investigation. She was 39.

Smith was the widow of Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, whom she married in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. She had been fighting his family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)