ANNA NICOLE SMITH - APPEAL COURT HALTS ANNA NICOLE BURIAL

APPEAL COURT HALTS ANNA NICOLE BURIAL

Anna Nicole Smith's body cannot be taken immediately to the Bahamas for burial, a Florida court has ruled.

An appeal was launched by the Playboy playmate's mother, Virgie Arthur, after a court said last week that she should be buried alongside her son in the island nation.

Judge Larry Seidlin said that Richard Milstein, a lawyer acting as guardian to Ms Smith's five-month-old daughter Danielyn, should transfer her body.

Ms Arthur had wanted her daughter to be buried in her native Texas.

The fourth district court of appeal in West Palm Beach has granted an emergency petition for her mother, preventing the transferral of Ms Smith's body and giving the court more time to consider the appeal.

The reality television star and actress was found to be "unresponsive" in her Floridian hotel room on February 8th and was later pronounced dead in hospital, although it is not yet known what caused her death.

Ms Smith, 39, lost her 20-year-old son Daniel in September to an overdose of Zoloft, Lexapro and methadone.

Her five-month-old baby girl Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, now at the centre of a paternity battle, was born just three days before the death of Daniel.

The paternity of the late Ms Smith's baby is to be decided by a Californian court.