Tag: Conservatorship Guardianship

How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life—and have held on to it for thirteen years. By Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino July 3, 2021 On June 22nd, Britney Spears’s management team started getting nervous. Spears, who is thirty-nine, has spent the past thirteen years living under a conservatorship, a legal structure in which a person’s personal, economic, and legal decision-making power is ceded to others. Called a guardianship in most states, the arrangement is intended for people who cannot take care of themselves. Since the establishment of Spears’s conservatorship, she has released four albums, headlined a global tour that grossed a hundred and thirty-one million dollars, and performed for four years in a hit Las Vegas residency. Yet her conservators, who include her father, Jamie Spears, have controlled her spending, communications, and personal decisions. In April, Spears had requested a hearing, in open court, to discuss the terms of the arrangement. It was scheduled for June 23rd. Members of Spears’s team, most of whom have had little or no direct contact with her for years, didn’t expect drastic changes to result. Two years earlier, in the midst of health struggles and pressure from Spears, Jamie had stepped down from his duties overseeing her personal life, and now the team thought that perhaps she wanted to remove him as the conservator of her financial affairs. Some of the team told reporters that they believed Spears liked the conservatorship arrangement, as long as her father wasn’t involved. Running the business of Britney had become routine: every Thursday at noon, about ten people responsible for managing Spears’s legal and business affairs, public relations, and social media met to discuss merchandise deals, song-license requests, and Spears’s… Read More

by Aron Solomon October 2, 2021 Share this: Supporters of Britney Spears celebrate Supporters of pop star Britney Spears hug as they celebrate in Los Angeles after a judge suspended the father of Britney Spears from his 13-years-long role as the controller of the singer’s business affairs. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo While Sep. 29 will go down as a historic day in the 13-year conservatorship involving Britney Spears, given that the court has removed Jamie Spears as conservator, there is a much larger issue for which the clock is ticking. This issue is critical for anyone in California who is under a conservatorship — and its impact could be felt throughout the nation. When Britney Spears, a conservatee under the laws of the state of California, was allowed in July by Judge Brenda Penny to hire her own lawyer, this was truly groundbreaking. Under California law and that of many other jurisdictions in the United States, a conservatee has no right to hire their own counsel. Opinion logo Legally, the conservator essentially has the right of personhood over the conservatee. In other words, if the conservatee wants their own counsel and the conservator doesn’t want them to have their own counsel, not only will it not happen, it is as if the conservatee themselves asked for it not to happen. While a legal reality, this is obviously only one of many logical fictions involved in conservatorship law. A new California Assembly bill, AB 1194, introduced by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-San Jose), seeks to address what conservatorship experts have called a grave injustice. Generally in conservatorships, the relationship between the conservator and conservatee is not subject to either as regular or as rigorous review as there should be given the gravity of… Read More