What is a conservatorship?

A conservatorship is a legal arrangement that places a vulnerable adult under the supervision of another adult, a “conservator.” In some cases, the conservator assumes responsibility for the vulnerable person’s finances or their “person” — their daily activities and whereabouts. In some cases, like Spears’s, the conservator or conservators assume responsibility for both. Most conservatorships are enacted in situations involving a change in the mental capacity or decision-making ability of a person in control of a significant amount of wealth. “If they didn’t have assets, nobody would need to ask the court for the appointment of somebody to manage those assets,” says Lisa Cukier, a partner at the Boston law firm Burns & Levinson who has worked extensively with guardianships and conservatorships. “If the assets are small, it doesn’t matter.”

Jamie Spears, 69, is Britney Spears’s father. He was married to her mother, Lynne Spears, 66, until 2002. Because their daughter’s career began in childhood, Jamie and Lynne have long been closely involved with her professional life. Spears has twice spoken out against her father in court this year. Both times, she decried his handling of the conservatorship as cruel and abusive. ( According to NBC reporter Alicia Victoria Lozano, Jamie’s legal counsel says Spears’s father is “hurt” by the allegations.) A July 26 court filing from Rosengart alleged that Jamie used his power as conservator to mistreat and control his daughter, as well as enrich himself at her expense. The filing alleges that Jamie paid himself a higher monthly salary from Spears’s estate than Spears herself and has paid himself a share of the revenue generated by Spears’s performances. According to the filing, Jamie’s cut from Spears’s Las Vegas residency, which grossed $137.7 million, amounted to more than $2 million. “Although it is common for managers, agents, and other industry professionals to receive a percentage of an artists’ earnings, Mr. Spears is none of those,” the filing continues. “He is a conservator and, as a conservator, his role is to be burdened by, rather than benefit from, the conservatorship. Mr. Spears is not a professional business or financial manager. In fact, the Spears family struggled financially under his leadership and filed for bankruptcy in 1998.” The filing also quotes Lynne — who alleges that Jamie “approved treatment from a ‘sports enhancement doctor’ who prescribed Ms. Britney Spears medication that seemed ‘entirely inappropriate’ and ‘compelled’ Ms. Britney Spears to enter a health facility against her wishes” — and Jodi Montgomery, who is currently acting as conservator of Spears’s person in Jamie’s stead. According to the filing, it is Montgomery’s “strong opinion and recommendation that the persons serving as Ms. Spears’ conservators not be family members. Instead, it is in Ms. Spears’ best interests that only qualified neutral professional and/or corporate fiduciaries serve as her conservators.” In early August, Rosengart asked the court to move the hearing on the future of Jamie’s role in the conservatorship from its slated date of Sept. 29 to earlier; the ongoing arrangement, according to Rosengart, was endangering Spears’s mental health. Judge Brenda Penny denied Rosengart’s request for Jamie’s immediate removal from Spears’s conservatorship — but her decision came “without prejudice,” meaning Rosengart and Spears could renew their request. On Aug. 12, Jamie’s lawyers “filed legal documents saying that while there are no grounds for his removal, he will step down,” according to the Associated Press .

How did Britney Spears end up under a conservatorship in the first place?

In 2008, after months of erratic behavior during her high-profile divorce and custody battle (see: 2007’s widely publicized head-shaving spectacle, and the paparazzi confrontation soon afterward that resulted in Spears attacking a photographer’s car with an umbrella), Spears was placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold. While she was hospitalized in Los Angeles, Spears’s parents initiated proceedings to place her under the temporary conservatorship of her father, Jamie, and a lawyer named Andrew Wallet, who was appointed by the court.

Why is the conservatorship in the news now?

The conservatorship has been a source of curiosity for some fans for more than a decade, but interest in it went mainstream in February with the arrival of the New York Times-Hulu documentary “Framing Britney Spears.” The film (which was nominated for two Emmys this year) re-examined and re-litigated some of the biggest controversies of Spears’s career, quietly making the case that the obsessive, invasive tabloid culture of the late 1990s and 2000s was largely responsible for her brief era of bizarre behavior and, indirectly, the conservatorship that followed. Its popularity prompted some viewers to demand apologies from journalists and other figures who made comments to and about Spears’s sexuality, public image and parenting decisions that were perceived as rude or disrespectful — including Justin Timberlake, Diane Sawyer and Matt Lauer . In June, Spears made a rare request to speak on her own behalf at a court hearing and asked that the virtual proceedings be open to the public. On June 23, Spears spoke at length about the “demoralizing” indignities and miseries of her life as a conservatee: She described being forced to take prescription drugs, as well as mandated to go multiple times a week to therapy sessions in places where paparazzi and the public could clearly see her coming and going. She also described wanting to have another baby but being barred by her conservators from visiting a doctor to have her IUD removed. Spears requested toward the end of the hearing that her conservatorship be terminated entirely. Local protests timed to her hearing in July were organized in cities around the country and abroad , some of them by the #FreeBritney movement.

What is the #FreeBritney movement?

The #FreeBritney movement is an activist group, formed mostly online, that began to materialize in 2009 soon after the details of Spears’s conservatorship became public. Those affiliated with #FreeBritney often allege that Spears is a victim of conservatorship abuse: Most believe she is in fact capable enough to live independently, and some believe that her conservators placed her under their care unfairly and for longer than necessary for their own benefit.

How long has Britney Spears been under a conservatorship?

Spears has been under her conservatorship for 13 years. The arrangement was considered temporary at first, but in time, it seems to have become permanent — a common trajectory for conservatorships, according to experts. Periodic hearings to renew temporary guardianships or conservatorships “take up a lot of judicial resource. It’s difficult for the family. It’s difficult for the protected person,” says Cukier. “So sometimes the courts will say, ‘Look, you’ve been here for three temporary periods, just make it permanent. And if you want to terminate the conservatorship later’ — which is something Britney is dealing with — ‘then come back to court with your medical evidence.’ ”

Who are the conservators?

Spears’s conservatorship has undergone multiple changes over the years since it was first implemented. Wallet, the court-appointed lawyer, resigned as co-conservator in 2019, leaving Jamie Spears the sole conservator. Jamie stepped away temporarily later that year after undergoing colon surgery. In the interim, his responsibilities were assigned to Montgomery, a professional fiduciary. In 2020, Spears requested through her lawyer that Montgomery be made conservator in her father’s stead, and that a bank be appointed as a conservator of her estate. The bank, Bessemer Trust, was approved to be a co-conservator alongside Jamie. In June, however, Spears said that she wanted to be released from her conservatorship entirely, and soon afterward, Bessemer Trust asked to withdraw its involvement. (According to the New York Times, the bank said in its July 2021 court filing that it had not begun acting as a co-conservator and had not been authorized to do so before withdrawing.) Judge Brenda Penny accepted the resignation on July 14. In the days after Spears’s emotional court testimony asking for her “life back,” her conservators began to squabble among themselves. Jamie Spears, for example, blamed Montgomery’s handling of the conservatorship for some of the hardship Spears described and called for an investigation, according to court documents. (Montgomery’s lawyers told TMZ that Montgomery had only ever conducted the conservatorship in accordance with the California Code of Ethics.) And when Montgomery asked the court for extra security in response to death threats she received after Spears’s testimony, Jamie filed an objection .

Who has spoken out in support of Britney Spears?

Several celebrities have voiced their support for the pop star. Rapper Missy Elliott and actress Jameela Jamil on Twitter called for Spears’s release from the arrangement. Christina Aguilera, Spears’s contemporary at the top of the teen pop charts in the 2000s, tweeted a lengthy thread championing Spears’s cause, saying, “It is unacceptable that any woman, or human, wanting to be in control of their own destiny might not be allowed to live life as they wish.” Mariah Carey also tweeted : “We love you Britney!!! Stay strong.” Madonna, meanwhile, posted a photo of herself wearing a Britney Spears shirt in an Instagram story in July, along with the caption: “Give this woman her life back.” Paris Hilton said on her podcast , “This Is Paris,” that Spears had “built a huge empire. She’s a legend, she’s an icon, she’s a mother. She’s amazing and she has these people controlling her money, her life .” Miley Cyrus changed the lyrics to “Party in the U.S.A.” at a performance in Las Vegas to include the words “Free Britney.” Shortly after the July 14 hearing, Spears wrote a tweet referencing her new lawyer and specifically thanking her fans for standing by her: “New with real representation today ... I feel GRATITUDE and BLESSED !!!! Thank you to my fans who are supporting me ... You have no idea what it means to me be supported by such awesome fans !!!! God bless you all !!!!!”

Who is Jamie Lynn Spears?

Jamie Lynn Spears, 30, is Britney Spears’s younger sister. The former star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101,” now an actress on Netflix’s “Sweet Magnolias,” broke with her family’s history of silence around the conservatorship to make a statement in late June. “I don’t care if she wants to run away to a rainforest and have a zillion babies in the middle of nowhere, or if she wants to come back and dominate the world the way she has done so many times before, because I have nothing to gain or lose either way,” the younger Spears said in an Instagram story days after the June 23 court hearing. “Maybe I didn’t support her the way the public would like me to, with a hashtag on a public platform. But I can assure you I’ve supported my sister long before there was a hashtag, and I’ll support her long after.” In the following weeks, however, Spears effectively swatted down her sister’s gesture. On July 16, Spears posted a photo to Instagram that contained the words, “Never forget who ignored you when you needed them and who helped you before you even had to ask,” and in her caption, she wrote, “There’s nothing worse than when the people closest to you who never showed up for you post things in regard to your situation whatever it may be and speak righteously for support.” Fans speculated that the post was directed at Jamie Lynn. The next day, Spears mentioned her sister directly in another Instagram caption. “For those of you who choose to criticize my dancing videos ... look I’m not gonna be performing on any stages anytime soon with my dad handling what I wear, say, do, or think,” she wrote. “And no I’m not gonna put on heavy makeup and try try try on stage again and not be able to do the real deal with remixes of my songs for years and begging to put my new music in my show for MY fans ... so I quit !!!! I don’t like that my sister showed up at an awards show and performed MY SONGS to remixes !!!!! My so-called support system hurt me deeply !!!!"

Who has resigned from Britney Spears’s team?

In the weeks since her blistering court testimony, several people associated with Spears’s conservatorship have distanced themselves or quit. In the June hearing, Spears noted that she had never been informed that her conservatorship could be terminated, and added that “my attorney says I can’t — it’s not good, I can’t let the public know anything they did to me.” Soon afterward, Samuel D. Ingham III, the court-appointed lawyer who became Spears’s attorney when she was deemed unfit to choose her own representation, placed a request with the court to step down from his role. His resignation was approved on July 14. In addition to Bessemer Trust withdrawing from its role as co-conservator of Spears’s finances , Spears’s longtime manager Larry Rudolph also resigned, citing Spears’s apparent indication that she plans to officially retire.

What will it take for Britney Spears to get out of her conservatorship?

In theory, termination of a conservatorship is somewhat simple, according to Cukier. Theoretically, if Cukier were to find herself under a conservatorship she no longer needed, she says, “I would go into court with my clinical data showing that I have been evaluated for my mental capacity to manage my own finances. And I would prove to the court that I now have been restored to mental capacity to handle these issues.” The problem, of course, is that it’s often not quite that simple. “If the person is under conservatorship, then there’s a lot of presumptions that are made,” Cukier says. “That they’re not trustworthy, or that their mental impairment is impacting their thought process in wanting to get a doctor’s note. It creates this presumption, it creates a prejudice, if you will, and doctors might be like, ‘Oh, yeah, right.’ It’s sort of like the person in a mental institution who says, ‘I don’t need to be here anymore.’ Well, everybody says that. And some people are correct.” It’s possible that Spears being granted permission to retain her own counsel will bode well for her being granted an end to her conservatorship. In many states, “the thinking is, if you’re incompetent to handle your finances, you’re also incompetent to contract with a lawyer,” Cukier says. “It’s inconsistent to think that you can’t oversee your own financial affairs, but suddenly, you can oversee your own financial affairs as it pertains to getting a lawyer.” That said, the fact that the court has allowed Spears to retain her own lawyer doesn’t necessarily mean her conservatorship will be deemed unnecessary anytime soon. “Just retaining a lawyer doesn’t mean that you have automatically proven that you’re competent,” Cukier says. In many states, “you still have a burden of proof — you’ve still got to show that you’ve restored to competence. And if you can’t show that, then you may be deemed to have sufficient capacity to retain a lawyer, but you haven’t shown that you have sufficient capacity to handle your finances.”

Is the U.S. government involved with Britney’s conservatorship battle?

The federal government is not involved in the court case itself, but Spears’s ongoing court battle has caught the attention of several Washington politicians, who have recently pledged to investigate existing conservatorship law and improve oversight of conservatorships and guardianships across U.S. states. In March, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) called for a hearing on abusive conservatorships . Last month’s hearing inspired another wave of support from Washington. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said on his podcast in July that what’s happening to Spears “needs to end,” while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an interview with Politico that while the federal government’s power to change conservatorship law is limited, it isn’t nonexistent. “It turns out that the federal government collects a lot of data about conservatorships: where they’re used, when they’re used, how long they’re used. But they keep all that data secret,” she said. “This is an area where sunshine might help.” Gaetz joined fans and members of the #FreeBritney movement at a rally outside the courthouse in Los Angeles on July 14. “There’s a lot that still divides us,” he said in an address to the crowd. “But one thing we can all agree on is that Jamie Spears is a d---.” Less than a week later, Reps. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced the Freedom and Right to Emancipate from Exploitation Act, or FREE Act, that would give a person under a conservatorship the right to petition to have their court-appointed guardian replaced with a public guardian. “Under the FREE Act, we would Free Britney,” Crist said in a statement, “along with the countless number of seniors and persons with disabilities being abused and exploited by the broken system.” Read more: Britney Spears requests termination of her conservatorship: ‘It’s embarrassing and it’s demoralizing’ Documentaries are changing public opinion about celebrities — with consequences even the filmmakers didn’t expect From 2019: The battle of Britney Spears

Pop Culture

What to know about Britney Spears’s court battle over her conservatorship

By Ashley Fetters Maloy

August 12, 2021 at 6:25 p.m. EDT

Britney Spears attends the premiere of “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood” in July 2019. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

After 13 years as Britney Spears’s conservator, her father, Jamie Spears, agreed Thursday to vacate the role. The action comes after Britney Spears’s recently appointed lawyer, the former federal prosecutor Mathew Rosengart, filed a petition for her father’s suspension and removal from the conservatorship on July 26. (That petition was denied by the judge.)

“We are pleased that Mr. Spears and his lawyer have today conceded in a filing that he must be removed. It is vindication for Britney,” Rosengart wrote in a statement to The Washington Post. “We are disappointed, however, by their ongoing shameful and reprehensible attacks on Ms. Spears and others."

Another petition Rosengart filed last month with the Los Angeles Superior Court requested the instatement of Jason Rubin, a certified public accountant, as Jamie Spears’s successor, emphasizing that Britney Spears’s new authority to choose her own legal counsel should be considered proof that she could choose her own conservator of estate. “Ms. Spears respectfully submits that the Court should appoint her nominee; in that, it is an objectively intelligent preference to nominate a highly qualified, professional fiduciary in this circumstance," the filing read. "Moreover, Ms. Spears respectfully submits that, given the Court’s recognition at the July 14, 2021, hearing that Ms. Spears has sufficient capacity to choose her own legal counsel, she likewise has sufficient capacity to make this nomination.”

At that hearing, Spears spoke by phone and became emotional describing what she called “conservatorship abuse” at the hands of her father. Spears told the court she wanted to press charges against him and repeated the same plea she made at the hearing on June 23: that the court terminate her conservatorship.

Since that dramatic June appearance — in which Spears, 39, made a rare public statement about the misery she has endured as a conservatee and asked for the termination of the “embarrassing” arrangement — fans and observers have anxiously awaited new developments.

Conservatorships are notoriously complex arrangements, and Spears’s has been especially confusing for observers because many of its details and inner workings have been concealed from public view. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions about Spears’s conservatorship so you can get up to speed.