The singer is trying to get her long-standing conservatorship dissolved.
Britney Spears’ father tried as recently as last month to prevent his daughter from spending her money the way she wanted to, according to a court document filed this week in a Los Angeles probate court.
A legal arrangement known as a conservatorship has been in place for 13 years that gives Spears’ father, James “Jamie” Spears, control over the singer’s finances. According to a document filed Thursday, Jamie Spears has wielded that power in myriad ways that hurt his 39-year-old daughter ― such as trying to prevent her from taking a brief trip to Hawaii.
The island vacation was to be taken several weeks after Britney’s first explosive and emotional remarks about her living situation, which she described as “abusive.” It required the singer to secure permission from her father, who disapproved “of the expenditure that would have come from his daughter’s own, hard-earned money.”
Jamie Spears ultimately allowed Britney Spears to travel. But “the mere objection to his adult daughter taking a brief, well-earned vacation at this point in her life, while other funds are lavishly expended, underscores why suspension, and ultimately removal, should not wait,” Mathew Rosengart, the singer’s lawyer, argued.
“These spendthrift ways are particularly problematic when contrasted with the stringent, ‘absolutely microscopic control’ Mr. Spears has exercised over his daughter, evidently since her childhood and continuing through today,” Rosengart argued.
Rosengart was appealing to a court to move up Britney Spears’ next court date to Aug. 23, in hopes of removing her father from her conservatorship as soon as possible. The next hearing is currently scheduled for Sept. 29.
At the very least, Rosengart said, the court should suspend Jamie Spears’ power until the hearing date, if it cannot be moved.
In a filing of his own on Friday, Jamie Spears rejected the idea of freezing his powers, claiming that Britney’s other conservator, Jodi Montgomery, had questioned the singer’s mental health as recently as last month.
The pop star’s filing stated that Jamie Spears was spending large sums of his daughter’s money without her consent. Jamie spent $1.4 million on his own attorneys’ fees between October 2020 and June 2021, and a “shocking and inexplicable” portion of that massive figure ― more than $500,000 ― was apparently billed as “Media Matters,” the filing read. The singer’s father had also more than doubled her manager’s pay after Britney announced she was going on hiatus in 2019.
“In short, although a two-month wait for a hearing on the Petition may not seem significant in the context of 13 years, Ms. Spears should not be forced to continue [to] feel traumatized, lose sleep, and suffer further,” the filing read. “Every day matters.”
Spears would like an accountant, Jason Rubin, to temporarily replace her father as a conservator of her estate, which is worth an estimated $60 million, while she works to dissolve the legal arrangement. Montgomery, who makes decisions about the singer’s person, declared under oath in a court document filed last month that Jamie’s removal from the legal arrangement was “critical” to Britney’s “emotional health and well-being.”
The singer’s mother, Lynne Spears, concurred, stating: “It is clear to me that James P. Spears is incapable of putting my daughter’s interests ahead of his own on both a professional and a personal level.”
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