Britney Spears Conservatorship: Pop Star Fights for Control of Her Life

Britney Spears faces an uncertain road ahead of her in the journey to end her conservatorship. Since 2008, the pop-star who is one of the world’s best-selling musical artists, has been under a conservatorship–a legal arrangement where an adult who is deemed unfit to manage their own life is appointed a legal guardian. This guardian has the power to oversee the conservatee’s finances and daily schedule, with the ability to enforce certain rules on what a conservatee can or can’t do.

Britney Spears was put under the conservatorship by her father, James “Jamie” Spears. Her father petitioned to instate the conservatorship after the musician was placed on a three day psychiatric hold two separate times. Her father’s petition was made permanent that year, and in 2009 Andrew Wallet joined him in controlling Spears’ affairs.

Spears was experiencing a personal and professional tipping point at the time the conservatorship was instated. Although she had just released the top charting album Blackout, Spears had recent stints in drug rehabilitation facilities as well as scuffs with paparazzi who had taken pictures of her driving unsafely with her son Sean. By the time Spears was placed in the psychiatric holds that precipitated her conservatorship, she was going through a divorce with her husband, Kevin Federline.

Spears experienced more professional success while under the conservatorship. She released four albums–Circus, Femme Fatale, Britney Jean, and Glory–the first two of which went platinum. Spears also generated $137 million dollars of revenue from her Piece of Me residency in Las Vegas. She does not have direct access to her finances due to the rules of the conservatorship.

How #FreeBritney is trying to help Britney Spears

Spears’ fanbase became aware of the conservatorship after a former member of her legal team left a voicemail on a Spears’ centered podcast in 2019. The individual, who chose to remain anonymous, described turmoil within the Spears family after Spears’ father had become ill with a colon sickness and had sent Spears to a psychiatric facility involuntarily.

Since the revelation of Spears’ conservatorship became public–a decade after it was instated– her devoted fans, other celebrities, and the general public have spoken out in favor of ending the conservatorship, under the banner of the #FreeBritney movement.

In February of 2021, The New York Times released a documentary on the movement as well as the events that led to the conservatorship, called Framing Britney Spears. Spears was reportedly emotional and distraught by the documentary and the light it cast on her private life.

In November of 2020, Spears’ court appointed attorney, Samuel D. Ingham III, filed for her father to be removed from the conservatorship. This request was denied this week by a judge in Los Angeles. This denial is not a response to a 24 minute testimony Spears gave at a hearing last week, where the anguished star passionately described the pain her conservatorship has caused her over the past thirteen years.

Spears lamented the suffocating restrictions she faces under the conservatorship, as well as the infuriating lack of control she has in some of the most personal aspects of her own life.

Britney Spears has yet to file a petition to formally end the conservatorship, but has expressed her dissatisfaction with the arrangement for years to her attorney. Spears said that she was not aware she could file a petition to end the conservatorship in its entirety.