After about a year of very dedicated campaigning on the part of embattled pop superstar Britney Spears to either remove her father, Jamie Spears, from her 13-year conservatorship, or end the agreement all together, there has now been a surprising new development. The elder Spears, who has been in control of all or part of the conservatorship for the entire time, has now filed a petition to end it.
According to CNN, which obtained the court documents filed by Jamie Spears, Tuesday saw the singer's father file a petition asking for Britney Spears' conservatorship to be terminated. His filing states, in part:
Recent events related to this conservatorship have called into question whether circumstances have changed to such an extent that grounds for establishment of a conservatorship may no longer exist...Ms. Spears has told this Court that she wants control of her life back without the safety rails of a conservatorship. She wants to be able to make decisions regarding her own medical care, deciding when, where and how often to get therapy. She wants to control the money she has made from her career and spend it without supervision or oversight. She wants to be able to get married and have a baby, if she so chooses. In short, she wants to live her life as she chooses without the constraints of a conservator or court proceeding.
As anyone who pays attention to celebrity legal matters will likely know, Britney Spears has made several pleas to the court in an attempt to change who controls her conservatorship, but to no avail. Her dad has been in charge of her finances as conservator of her estate for the entire term of the agreement, with him also being conservator of her person for a time, until he stepped away to deal with his own health issues in 2019. This is when Jodi Montgomery was assigned as temporary conservator of Spears' person, and what seems to have set her off on a path to have her dad totally removed from her case.
The tide finally began to turn Spears' way over this summer, when, after over a decade of not speaking about the conservatorship, she finally opened up in court, and detailed several alleged abuses by her father. That testimony, where Spears said that the arrangement was akin to "sex trafficking" made a lot more people take notice, including the court that oversees her case. It wasn't long after that she began to be granted more freedoms, such as the ability to drive again, and gaining control over her Instagram account.
Spears also began speaking out more, in general, and had several thinly veiled social media confrontations with her younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, as well as deciding to call out the “people closest” to her for only publicly supporting her bid to end or change the conservatorship once she made her shocking statement in court. There have also been a lot of new court filings and/or in-fighting between members of Spears' family, as well as co-conservators Jamie Spears and Jodi Montgomery.
This led to Britney Spears petitioning (again) to suspend her father from her conservatorship, and him agreeing to step down "when the time is right," in mid-August, though his filing on the matter at the time also stated that "it is highly debatable whether a change in conservator at this time would be in Ms. Spears’ best interest." Now, it appears that the older Spears is tired of fighting, as his new filing to end the conservatorship also noted:
As Mr. Spears has said again and again, all he wants is what is best for his daughter. If Ms. Spears wants to terminate the conservatorship and believes that she can handle her own life, Mr. Spears believes that she should get that chance.
Hopefully, the trouble with Britney Spears conservatorship will be settled soon, and in the best way for her to move forward positively.
