REYKJAVIK, (Reuters) – The remains of former chess champion Bobby Fischer, who died two years ago in Iceland, will be dug up to settle a paternity claim, Iceland’s Supreme Court has ruled.
The court said tissue samples were needed to determine the paternity of Jinky Young, the Filipina daughter of Fischer’s former lover. It overturned a ruling by a lower court earlier this year denying the request.
“In order to obtain such a sample it is unavoidable to exhume his body,” a court document published this week said, without specifying when the remains would be dug up.
Fischer’s estate, estimated at around $2 million, has been the subject of an inheritance dispute involving claims by a former wife, two nephews and the U.S. tax authorities.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said Jinky’s need to discover the identity of her father outweighed the concerns of a municipal court, which had denied an exhumation request earlier this year on the grounds it was not strong enough.
The appeal was granted after DNA samples needed to establish paternity were deemed insufficient, the court said.
Fischer, a former child prodigy, became the only U.S. world chess champion by defeating the Soviet Union’s masters but spent his last years as a fugitive from U.S. authorities, wanted for defying sanctions against Yugoslavia.
Once feted as a national hero and seen by some as the greatest chess talent ever, the Chicago-born Fischer refused to defend his title and relinquished to the Soviet champion Anatoly Karpov in 1975.
He died at the age of 64 after an unspecified illness in Reykjavik and was buried in a cemetery south of the Icelandic capital.
