The widow of the man who fought Anna Nicole Smith over a Texas millionaire's oil fortune is urging the Supreme Court to stay out of a long-running legal battle over Smith's estate.

Elaine Marshall, in court papers filed Friday, said that a court order preventing Smith's estate from collecting $88.5 million from the estate of Marshall's late husband, E. Pierce Marshall, should remain in place while the federal appeals court in San Francisco tries to sort out the tangle of competing claims.

Howard K. Stern, Smith's lawyer-turned-boyfriend, asked Justice Anthony Kennedy to lift the appeals court order. Stern said that Smith's 2-year-old daughter, Dannielynn, is the sole beneficiary of Smith's estate.

Smith died of a drug overdose in 2007.

Stern, who claimed he was the girl's father until DNA tests showed otherwise, has been charged with conspiring to give Smith thousands of prescription pills before her death.

Pierce Marshall was the youngest son of oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, who married Smith in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. The elder Marshall died the following year.