A US appeals court rebuffed pop icon Michael Jackson's bid to banish his ex-wife Debbie Rowe from the lives of their two children, rejecting his claim that she gave up her parental rights.
The decision, which came amid a bitter custody battle between the embattled star and the former doctor's receptionist, also revealed that a trial judge in the case believed the couple's four-year marriage was an "arranged deal."
Five judges of the California Court of Appeal upheld a lower court's ruling invalidating a judge's 2001 ruling under which Rowe agreed to give up her parental rights.
In October 2001 a judge granted Rowe's request to completely terminate her parental rights, but shortly after Jackson's November 2003 arrest on charges that he allegedly molested a 13-year-old boy, Rowe began legal moves to regain custody of the children.
Wednesday's appeals court decision backed the lower court's ruling that Rowe's agreement to end her parental rights was invalid because the judge had made a procedural error.
Court documents showed that Rowe wanted to regain parental rights over the children -- son Prince Michael Jr. and daughter Paris -- amid concerns over the allegations against Jackson and amid his reported links with the radical black group, the Nation of Islam.
She sought temporary exclusive custody of the children, currently living with their father in Bahrain, "because of concerns arising from Michael's criminal prosecution and press reports Michael had associated with the Nation of Islam, whose members Deborah believed do 'not like Jews'," court documents showed.
Jackson's lawyers declined to comment on the ruling handed down in Los Angeles and his publicist Raymone Bain had no immediate reaction to the decision that could mark the start of an all-out battle by Rowe to regain custody of her children.
Former nurse Rowe, 46, met Jackson when she worked for his plastic surgeon and married him in November 1996, and bore two children with him in 1997 and 1998 whom she agreed not to contact following their divorce in 2000.
Following a media-bathed five-month trial in California, Jackson, 47, was last June acquitted on all charges of alleged child molestation, and he and his three children quickly left the United States to set up residence in the Gulf state of Bahrain.
Source: AFP via Yahoo! News