Malawi's highest court began deliberating on Madonna's bid to adopt a 3-year-old girl from the southern African country, as a dispute erupted over whether a man trying to stop the proceedings is the girl's father.

Madonna was not at Monday's closed-door hearing at the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal, and a ruling may not be announced for several days.

The 50-year-old pop star is fighting a lower court's decision that she cannot adopt Chifundo "Mercy" James because she had not been screened over time by Malawi authorities. The court said the rules were bent when Madonna adopted her son David from Malawi last year.

Madonna's Malawian lawyer Alan Chinula said he was "hopeful" the appeal would succeed, and argued the lower court had relied on outdated law to block the girl's adoption.

Madonna found the girl in 2006 at Kondanani Children's Village, an orphanage in the southern town of Bvumbwe just south of the commercial capital of Blantyre. It was the same year she adopted David, whom she found at another orphanage in the central Mchinji district.

Source: Associated Press