At a hearing on Tuesday, a lawyer for the pop singer said that Spears was scared of her father and wouldn't perform while he was charge of her career
A l. a. judge overseeing the long-running conservatorship of Britney Spears’s career and private life declined on Tuesday to right away remove the singer’s father because the head of her estate, despite her lawyer’s claim that she couldn't work with him responsible
“My client has informed me that she is scared of her father,” Samuel D. Ingham III, Spears’s court-appointed lawyer, told the judge, consistent with The Associated Press. “She won't perform again if her father is responsible of her career.”
“We are really at a crossroads,” Ingham added
The lawyer called Spears, who didn't participate within the hearing, a “high-functioning conservatee” and said that she had not spoken to her father, Jamie Spears, during a while
Los Angeles court Judge Brenda Penny said she would consider further petitions for Jamie Spears’s removal “down the road.” Penny did, however, name a company fiduciary, the Bessemer Trust, because the co-conservator of Spears’s estate, because the singer had requested
Since 2008, after a string of public meltdowns, Spears has lived under a singular conservatorship, sometimes referred to as a guardianship, a posh legal arrangement typically reserved for the old, ill or infirm. For quite a decade, the pop singer went by quietly with the setup, which controlled her finances, also as aspects of her day-to-day life, like her psychological state care, and where and the way she could travel
Spears, 38, who has not released an album since 2016 and has bogged down substantially since her early 2000s peak, announced an “indefinite work hiatus” in January 2019, at the time citing the health of her father, who had suffered a ruptured colon. But in August, she moved for the primary time to form substantial changes to the conservatorship in court “to reflect the main changes in her current lifestyle and her stated wishes,” consistent with her lawyer. She also kept open the likelihood that she would seek to urge obviate the arrangement altogether
Representatives for Jamie Spears have said that his stewardship of her career protected her from bankruptcy , turning her estate into an almost $60 million business, and certain saved her life. In court filings, Jamie said that his “sole motivation has been his unconditional love for his daughter and a fierce desire to guard her from those trying to require advantage of her.”
On Wednesday, Jamie Spears’s lawyer, Vivian Lee Thoreen, said in court that Ingham’s comments about the father-daughter relationship were merely hearsay and will not be admissible
Complicating the family and financial drama has been the continued presence of an especially vocal, activist wing of fans calling themselves the #FreeBritney movement, who have sought to portray the conservatorship as a money-hungry means of total control over Spears. For years, the Spears family largely ignored those accusations, but recently, the singer has signaled her appreciation for his or her support, which many have taken as implicit encouragement
Dozens of #FreeBritney fans were present at the courthouse on Tuesday, the A.P. said, and a few sat in on the hearing within the courtroom, despite it happening over videoconference due to the coronavirus
Also present and vocal at Tuesday’s hearing was a lawyer for Jamie’s ex-wife and Britney’s mother, Lynne Spears, who has not held a task within the conservatorship, but was considered an interested party. She called Britney’s relationship with Jamie “toxic,” and said she believed it had been “time to start out fresh.” The lawyer added that Jamie had mentioned his daughter as “a racehorse who has got to be handled like one.”
“It has broken Lynne’s heart that things have come to the present point,” the lawyer, Gladstone N. Jones, said