The harsh and much criticized conservatorship that has dominated Britney Spears’ life for more than a decade isn’t over, but the onetime Princess of Pop is now free of her father’s direct control, a California judge ruled Wednesday.
Judge Brenda Penny agreed to the passionate request by the younger Spears and her carefully selected legal team, that Jamie Spears should be removed from his position as her overseer of her $60 million fortune.
Today’s anticipated hearing comes after a summer of virtual court appearances by the 39-year-old singer and on the heels of weeks of fiery filings filled with invectives and accusations from multiple parties. The long-scheduled hearing in Judge Brenda Penny’s courtroom also follows a trio of timely documentaries putting the ultimately court-controlled conservatorship under magnifying glasses of varying poignancy.
As his behavior and role over the last 13 years has been in sharp focus, the elder Spears decided to end the conservatorship. The dramatic reversal on the part of Jamie Spears, who holds the purse strings to his daughter’s nearly $60 million fortune and her career, would allow the estranged patriarch to sidestep further probes into his conduct over the decades in regards to Britney’s cash and her agency.
Penny could also order the termination of Britney Spears’s contract, which would allow her to conduct a psychological and medical examination on the younger Spears in order to prove her competence. Britney’s ability to manage her own affairs and finances has been a matter of dispute since 2008 when she was placed under conservatorship.
After already pushing this past week for Jamie Spears’ immediate suspension and insinuating that a “serious investigation” and more charges may come from claims in the FX and Hulu film Controlling Britney Spears that the performer’s father and security team monitored her every move and word (including in her own bedroom), her attorney Matthew Rosengart, who was hired in July, stepped it up a notch Tuesday in an already high-pitched affair.
“Mr. Spears’s desperation to avoid suspension is self-evident and self-serving,” In an objection document filed in the LASC docket, the Greenberg Traurig lawyer stated that Jamie Spears had made the equivalent of dust about his fate. “He wants to escape justice and accountability (but will not) and he will evidently do or say anything to avoid it,” added Rosengart’s filing (read it here). “He knows that when he is suspended he must turn over the conservatorship files, including purported attorney-client privileged documents (communications with his lawyers), to the new temporary conservator.”
Rosengart has nominated CPA John Zabel to replace Britney Spears’ father as co-conservator. In the opening reaction in the eleventh-hour skirmish, Jamie Spears’ Holland & Knight LLP lawyer on Monday called Zabel unqualified to oversee such a complex estate and essentially unnecessary.
“There is no need for a temporary conservator because there is no vacancy in the position of conservator,” the elder Spears’ attorneys declared in their own filing. “Mr. Spears continues to serve faithfully as Conservator of the Estate, as he has done for the past thirteen years. Mr. Spears has not and should not be suspended, especially since the Conservatorship should soon be terminated.”
Adding more last-minute drama before this afternoon’s hearing, Britney Spears’ other co-conservator, Jodi Montgomery, who has handled the singer’s personal and medical affairs since 2019, pulled her $50,000-a-month request for 24/7 security as public scrutiny of the conservatorship has increased in recent months.
After battling with Jamie Spears since early July over approval of the pricey bill from Black Box Security, Montgomery filed a notice of withdrawal (read it here) this morning, saying the additional protection is “no longer needed at this time.”
Of course, the fact that Black Box and its leadership team are being accused of participating in the invasive surveillance of Britney Spears on behalf of her father probably wasn’t a good look for Montgomery anymore.
Amid Rosengart’s call for a new hearing on the matter, federal officials are reportedly looking into an investigation of the allegations in the New York Times-produced Controlling Britney Spears documentary that came out Friday as a follow-up to the Emmy-nominated Framing Britney Spears.