Freelance photographer, Larry Birkhead, filed a law suit against Anna Nicole Smith to determine the paternity of her 3 month old daughter Dannielynn Hope.

Birkhead, who was pleased when he heard the news that a Los Angeles judge had ordered a paternity test to determine whether Birkhead is really Dannielynn’s father, rather than Howard Stern as Anna Nicole claims.

He said “If I was on anybody’s Christmas list, they can scratch me off because this is the best Christmas present I could have ever received,” Birkhead told PEOPLE. “I’m one step closer to beginning a relationship with my daughter.”

Smith, has been living in the Bahamas with Stern, but she recently returned to the US last week for a hearing in San Francisco regarding her battle to collect her inheritance from her late husband, oilman J. Howard Marshall II.