Britney Spears has petitioned for her father to be permanently removed from overseeing her personal affairs in the conservatorship that has governed her life since 2008.
Spears’ conservatorship consists of two parts: her finances and her personal life. Jamie Spears temporarily stepped back from managing the latter in September 2019 owing to health issues, but retained control over her finances.
In the latest hearing on Spears’ conservatorship on Wednesday, her lawyer, Samuel D Ingham III, told a Los Angeles judge that Spears wished for her temporary care manager, Jodi Montgomery, to be permanently installed to manage her personal affairs.
Montgomery’s role regards Spears’ healthcare, medical history and insurance, and gives her power to “restrict and limit” visitors, to retain “caretakers and security guards” and to prosecute civil harassment restraining orders on her behalf.
Jamie Spears runs his daughter’s estimated £43.8m estate alongside the private wealth management firm the Bessemer Trust, which in February was appointed as co-conservator of her finances at the singer’s request. Her bid to have her father removed from the financial side of her conservatorship was rejected in November.
In an earlier hearing, Ingham told the court that Spears feared her father and would not return to work while he remained in charge of her personal life.
Last month, Jamie Spears’ lawyer, Vivian Thoreen, spoke out against coverage of the hearings and the theories of the high-profile #FreeBritney movement that suggest the star is being held against her will.
“I understand that every story wants to have a villain, but people have it so wrong here,” said Thoreen. “This is a story about a fiercely loyal, loving and dedicated father who rescued his daughter from a life-threatening situation. People were harming her and they were exploiting her. Jamie saved Britney’s life.”
The latest papers filed by Ingham confirm Thoreen’s statement that Spears reserves the right to request an end to the conservatorship. To date, she has not asked for its wholesale termination, only her father’s removal from its management.
The ongoing hearings and the recent documentary Framing Britney Spears have put a spotlight on the use of conservatorships, which are arrangements designed to manage the affairs of people with physical or mental limitations. This month, Republican congressmen Matt Gaetz (Florida) and Jim Jordan (Ohio) called for the House of Representatives to hold hearings about their use.
“If the conservatorship process can rip the agency from a woman who was in the prime of her life and one of the most powerful pop stars in the world, imagine what it can do to people who are less powerful and have less of a voice,” they wrote in a letter to house judiciary committee chairman Jerry Nadler.
The next hearing in Spears’ case is due in April.
