It was the talk of the town when pop-star Brittney Spears ran amok during an apparent mental breakdown in 2008. Her shaved head and umbrella-wielding attack on the paparazzi was the subject of jokes and late-night pieces for years afterward. But it’s 2021 now, and Britney’s episode has remained a yoke around her neck; throttling her agency as a person.
A nameless California judge has rejected Britney’s request to have her father, Jamie Spears, removed as conservator of her $40 million estates. A conservator is a person placed in charge of the property and/or personal affairs of a person deemed to be incompetent or otherwise incapable of doing so themselves. Jamie Spears became sole conservator after the resignation of Andrew Wallet as co-conservator in 2019. The wallet was paid $426,000 per year during this time to maintain the estate.
Jamie and Britney, meanwhile, have not been on the best of terms. Even while, apparently, fit to work and perform shows, the management of Britney’s finances and nearly everything else is under the legal authority of her father. This “maintenance” has become so invasive and creepy that Britney has even been disallowed from seeking to have her intrauterine device removed – rendering her unable to have children at this time.
Britney Spears has equated, in no uncertain terms, her life to a living hell, and her father’s treatment toward her not unlike that of a sex trafficker. Sympathy for her plight and disdain for the judge’s decision to, more or less, force forfeiture of her life and basic rights is seemingly universal on social media.
“I shouldn’t be in a conservatorship if I can work and provide money and work for myself and pay other people,” Britney told judge Brenda J. Penny – the judge who just appointed Bessemer Trust as the new co-conservator of her estate.