The conservatorship of Britney Spears began in 2008 when Spears was 26 years old. A conservatorship is the appointment by a judge of a guardian to manage the finances of another person, who is unable to do it themselves; Spears’ conservatorship began because her family was concerned about her mental health. It is intended for people who cannot care for themselves, which is the opposite of Spears’s case (The New Yorker). Since the conservatorship started, Spears has released four albums, gone on a global tour that made over 130 million dollars, and performed for four years in a Las Vegas residency. Spears has many conservators, including her father, Jamie Spears. All of her spending, communication, and personal decisions are monitored. Every Thursday, the conservatorship team that managed Spears’s financial and business affairs met to talk about song-license requests, merchandise deals, and Spears’s social media posts. Spears cannot even post freely on social media; all of her written posts are filtered through a company called CrowdSurf before being uploaded onto social media. Over the course of the conservatorship, most of her written submissions were posted, though some posts were filtered. In addition to these baseline restrictions, the conservatorship team had even more extreme restrictions for Spears. Spears has an IUD, and though she wanted to have another child, the team would not allow her to get the IUD removed (The New Yorker). Also, having a Las Vegas residency, she earned millions of dollars, though only was permitted a 2000 dollar allowance per week. At one point, Spears was forced to stay at a mental health facility and even perform against her will (The New York Times). The team controlled all aspects of her life: business, financial, personal, and even medical.
Britney Spears asked for a hearing in open court in April to talk about the “terms of the [conservatorship] arrangement,” which was scheduled for June 23, 2021 (The New Yorker). The night before the hearing, Spears called 911 and stated she was a victim of conservatorship abuse. Spears’s conservatorship team became scared, and they started talking about what would happen if she spoke out of control in court. At the end of the hearing the next day, an attorney wanted the judge to clear the courtroom and seal her testimony. Still, Spears refused and said, “somebody’s done a good job at exploiting my life … I feel like it should be an open-court hearing—they should listen and hear what I have to say” (Spears). Then, Spears started rambling and speaking directly to the judge, saying her father and conservatorship team should be put in jail. She talked about how she “had been isolated, medicated, financially exploited, and emotionally abused” (Spears).
Social media played a significant role in the case as Spears joined Tiktok, and soon fans started creating conspiracy theories based on clothes she was wearing, such as an instance where one person commented, “if you need help, wear yellow in your next video,” and soon after which she wore a yellow shirt. Soon the #FreeBritney movement emerged, and fans worldwide supported Spears in removing the conservatorship (The New Yorker). The entire world was rooting for Spears. On Wednesday, September 29, 2021, Jamie Spears was removed from Spears’s conservatorship after 13 years (Variety). Judge Brenda Penny ruled that he would be suspended immediately from the conservatorship and the control of her finances. On November 12, another hearing will decide if the entire conservatorship will end permanently (Variety). Until then, there has been a lot of progress made, though there is still a long way to go for Britney Spears if she is going to regain her freedom.
Sources:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/american-chronicles/britney-spears-conservatorship-nightmare
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/arts/music/britney-spears-conservatorship.html
https://variety.com/2021/music/news/britney-spears-conservatorship-father-removed-1235015386/
