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Smith's body 'belongs to me,' Florida judge says

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NEW: Probate judge asserts control over celebrity's corpse
• Judge OKs the embalming of Anna Nicole Smith's body
• Judge rules Smith's body must be held for DNA testing
• Bahamas court says baby must remain on Caribbean islands
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (CNN) -- A probate judge in Florida delayed until at least Thursday any decision about whether to release the remains of Anna Nicole Smith for burial and, if so, to whom.

"The body belongs to me now," Judge Larry Seidlin said Wednesday during an emergency hearing about the tug of war over the centerfold's remains. "For now, this matter will be taken up by me in probate court."

Those vying for control of the body include Smith's mother, Vergie Arthur, who wants the body sent to Texas for burial, according to a lawyer for Howard K. Stern, Smith's partner at the time of her death in a Florida hotel room last Thursday.

Stern is seeking to take the body for burial to the Bahamas, said his attorney, Ron Rale.

Earlier, Broward County Judge Lawrence Korda gave the county permission to embalm -- but not release -- Smith's body.

Korda's ruling came in response to a request by Larry Birkhead, a former boyfriend to Smith who has asserted he may be the father of Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn.

Birkhead's attorneys are seeking DNA samples from the body separate from those already taken by Broward County Medical Examiner Joshua Perper during the autopsy.

Perper had sought to end any further delays, writing in an affidavit that Smith's remains should be released promptly "because the death occurred five days ago and any further delay may affect the integrity of the body and its aesthetic appearance following embalming."

Among the people who say they are or may be the infant's father are Stern; Birkhead; and Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband, Frederic von Anhalt. An Australian bodybuilder also has stepped forward.

Stern's name is listed on the birth certificate as Dannielynn's father.

Child must stay in Bahamas

Meanwhile, a court in the Bahamas has ordered that the child remain there for now.

Interviewed Tuesday outside the Bahamian Supreme Court, Jamal Davis, an attorney for Smith's mother, said Dannielynn cannot be taken from the Bahamas after the court issued an injunction in the case.

"There is an order preventing the young child from being removed from the jurisdiction of the commonwealth of the Bahamas until the substantive application is heard," Davis said in an interview with CNN TV affiliate WSVN.

The details of the application and the date of the hearing were not immediately known.

Smith had been embroiled in a 12-year legal battle for a portion of the $1.6 billion estate left by her late husband, Texas oil baron J. Howard Marshall II. Smith married him when she was 26 and he was 89, and he died a year later.

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Anna Nicole Smith with Howard K. Stern and baby Dannielynn.

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