NASSAU, Bahamas — A California photographer who claims to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby girl entered a Bahamian courthouse for a three-way custody battle yesterday saying he hopes to see the infant soon.“I hope to get to see her and have her soon,” Larry Birkhead told reporters outside the Supreme Court building.

At the closed-door session, Birkhead was expected to square off against Smith’s estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, and Smith’s companion, Howard K. Stern, who is listed as the baby’s father on her birth certificate.

Arthur arrived after Birkhead in a white limousine. Asked why Arthur deserved custody, her attorney Deborah Rose said simply: “She’s the grandmother.”

Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, who was born in the Bahamas on September 7, is staying at a gated, waterfront mansion in Nassau where Smith lived with Stern until the former Playboy Playmate died of unknown causes in Florida on February 8.

Arthur has said she could provide a more stable home than Stern and should therefore be awarded custody of the baby, who could inherit a fortune. Smith had been fighting for a share of the estimated US$500 million estate of her husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, since his death in 1995.

Stern returned to Nassau from Florida over the weekend but was not seen outside the courthouse.

Thomas Evans, a prominent Bahamas attorney, said there is no specific provision in Bahamian law for a paternity claim based on DNA. The court could determine that any of those seeking to be the guardian of Dannielynn — or even another party, including the country’s Department of Social Services — should have custody, based on the best interests of the child, he said.

In another Nassau courtroom yesterday, a separate hearing was scheduled in a dispute over the waterfront mansion, known as “Horizons.” G. Ben Thompson, a South Carolina developer who briefly dated Smith, says he advanced her money for the US$900,000 house but she did not honour an agreement to pay the mortgage. She had claimed the house was a gift.

An attorney for Thompson, Godrey Pinder, said regardless of any court decision, he would not try to immediately evict Stern out of concern for Dannielynn.

“We want to be concerned about the baby,” he said. “We don’t want to hurt her, so whatever is reasonable.”

A court-appointed advocate for Dannielynn decided last week that Anna Nicole Smith should be buried in the Bahamas, beside the unmarked grave of her 20-year-old son Daniel, who died while visiting her in the island chain last year.

But Arthur wants Smith buried in her native Texas. She asked an appeals court in Florida yesterday to overturn a judge’s decision that authorised the advocate to decide where to bury Smith. Broward County Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin had declined to reconsider his ruling yesterday morning, saying he wanted to preserve Smith’s dignity by having the funeral occur as quickly as possible.