The battle over who will win custody of Anna Nicole Smith's remains has come down to determining which of her survivors is the least rotten. (Even the wannabe TV star judge has a potential financial stake in this one.) Now it seems that Smith's own mother, Virgie Arthur, was profiting from her daughter's loss of her son, Daniel, 20.

Asked on the witness stand at the Broward County, Florida, hearing yesterday if she'd ever been paid by celebrity hunters Splash News & Picture Agency for exclusive shots, Arthur said no. So attorneys pressed, asking Arthur whether she stood to receive more than $12,000 from the agency for exclusive shots of her putting flowers on Daniel's grave site, and then presenting her with what looked like a document on Splash letterhead. Arthur dodged.

"Have you in any fashion profited at all from the death of your daughter?" asked Krista Barth, an attorney for Howard K. Stern, Smith's Bahama-husband. Arthur took a long pause and said, "I'm trying to process that question." Finally, she pointed at Stern and said, "He has." In other moments, Arthur's attorneys challenged the line of questioning, but a judge allowed it. Arthur hedged nonetheless, explaining that she was trying to think of the right way to answer. Later, Arthur admitted that a "third party" had paid for her hotel room in the Bahamas, and that she had traveled there to visit her grandson's grave with David Leigh, a "close friend"—who also happens to be a journalist for Splash News.

A media insider covering the case tells Radar that when calls were made to Arthur's phone, they were returned by Leigh. A woman answering Leigh's phone in response to Radar's calls confirmed that Leigh was the point of contact for Arthur, but Leigh himself did not immediately return calls.

Splash spokesman, Gary Morgan, offered this statement: "Splash news protects its sources and all financial information is confidential. Splash has a reputation for breaking news stories and networks, magazines and newspapers licence [sic] our photos, videos and stories to illustrate those stories." Then Morgan added: "Tomorrow we will probably be questioned in court and you can see what happens then!!!"

[Full disclosure: Radar contracts with Splash (and others) for use of the agency's photos.]