The most talked-about legal battle of 2021 so far is that of Britney Spears’s conservatorship. Since her public mental breakdown in 2007, the Grammy award-winning dancer and singer has been under a conservatorship where she does not have control of her finances, career, or medical decisions.
Fans have been worried about the pop culture icon for years, as her Instagram posts often have an eerie feel. While many passed off these concerns as conspiracy theories, Britney finally spoke up in court, confirming many of these theories.
Bessemer Trust and her father are both in charge of her professional, medical, and personal decisions. While probate attorneys in Los Angeles typically carry out conservatorships for incapacitated older adults, Britney’s team argued that she had early-onset dementia and could not be trusted with control of her own bank account.
In her court testimony on June 23, Britney admitted that she’s tired of pretending to be okay when she’s been unhappy with the conservatorship for years. She alleges that she’s been forced to perform and to work overtime each week without a break.
She said she wanted to turn down her Las Vegas residency, and within days, she was told by her therapist that she was “not cooperating” in her rehearsals and not taking her medications. Under the conservatorship, Britney does not have control over her medical decisions, and she said she’d been prescribed lithium, which made her feel “drunk” and out of control.
She also said that her father arranged for her to have an IUD inserted to keep her from getting pregnant. She’s been wanting to have a third child, as her two sons are teenagers now, but her conservatorship likely wants her to continue performing instead of nursing and raising a child.
Her court testimony went on to call her father abusive and “100,000 percent” loving his power over her. Over the course of her career, her mother had been more involved than her father. That changed once she had her mental breakdown and the conservatorship was established, giving her father and Bessemer Trust complete control over her.
Bessemer Trust has since released a statement saying that they are resigning in order to respect her wishes. Her talent agent, Larry Rudolph, has also resigned in solidarity with her desire to take a break from performing.
Britney Spears said she wants to end the conservatorship without the court-mandated psychiatric evaluation. However, it’s unclear if a family law attorney in Los Angeles can end such an arrangement.
