Britney Spears is angry, depressed and has been lying to her fans about being okay. In a fiery speech she told the judge overseeing her longstanding conservatorship, “It’s my wish and my dream for this to end.”
News that Spears would appear virtually in court as part of her much-discussed conservatorship has sparked even more interest in the arrangement — even prompting one fan to file his own petition asking the court to end it.
Spears, however, was the one people expected to make that request — and she did exactly that on Wednesday, though not through a formal petition. Her attorney, Samuel D. Ingham III, in an Aug. 31 filing reiterated to the court that the conservatorship is voluntary. While unnamed sources in her circle have told the press for years that she’s unhappy with the arrangement, and a Monday New York Times story says confidential court documents corroborate that, Spears herself hasn’t publicly confirmed it until now.
To condense more than a decade of legal proceedings and nuanced arrangements for background: Spears’ conservatorship was established in 2008, after she was hospitalized for a psychiatric evaluation. The oversight is split into two parts, conservator of the person and conservator of the estate. Her father, Jamie Spears, did both until September 2019, when a woman named Jodi Montgomery took over the personal side. Jamie, along with attorney Andrew Wallet for several years and now with Bessemer Trust, oversees her business interests and finances.
Amid questions of why Spears hadn’t given a first-person account of her feelings, in person or via a written declaration, Ingham in October told L.A. County Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny the singer lacked the capacity to sign a declaration. Without such testimony, devoted fans scoured Instagram posts (largely videos of her dancing, seemingly random images and a handful of continually re-uploaded photos of herself) for clues and continued demanding #FreeBritney — all of which was further stoked by the NYT documentary Framing Britney Spears.
Nearly nine months later, Spears finally spoke for herself during a Wednesday afternoon hearing before Penny — who happens to be the mother of Insecure showrunner Prentice Penny.
While an attorney for Montgomery, Lauriann Wright, asked that Spears’ privacy and her children’s privacy be protected and anything that implicates those rights be private, Spears interrupted and insisted it all be public.
(Excerpt) Read more in: The Hollywood Reporter