Britney Spears To Address Court About Her Conservatorship This Week — What She Has Said So Far
She's finally getting a chance to speak for herself.
Dooley Productions / Shutterstock Britney Spears will speak about her conservatorship for the first time during a June 23 court hearing.
The pop star has been living under a legal guardianship since 2008 that grants her father, Jamie Spears, control over her career, daily life and multi-million dollar estate.
The battle to negotiate the terms of the conservatorship has ignited the #FreeBritney movement which has given way to documentaries chronicling Spears’s complicated life and career.
Yet one voice that has been consistently missing from the narrative is Spears’s own. Her court appearance seeks to change this.
However, we have received glimpses into the singer’s perspective on her conservatorship, the #FreeBritney movement, and the many conflicting opinions on her life, primarily through statements from her lawyers and her cryptic Instagram posts.
What has Britney Spears said about her conservatorship and the #FreeBritney movement?
Spears has reportedly pushed to end the conservatorship since 2014.
Newly obtained court documents reveal that Spears has been raising concerns about her father’s role in the conservatorship since 2014.
“She articulated she feels the conservatorship has become an oppressive and controlling tool against her,” a court investigator assigned to her case wrote in 2016.
In 2019, Spears told a court she felt forced by her conservators to stay in a mental facility and perform against her will.
Spears wants her father removed from the conservatorship.
In August 2020, Spears, through her lawyers, expressed her wish to block her father from returning to his role as her sole conservator after a brief hiatus from the position.
Later that year, the pop star’s attorney Samuel D. Ingham III told reporters, “My client has informed me that she is afraid of her father.”
He added that Spears said she would not return to performing if her father was her conservator.
In an April 2021 court filing, Spears’s lawyers requested her father’s permanent removal from the guardianship.
A hearing set for November 4 will determine whether or not the conservatorship should be terminated entirely.
Spears is said to appreciate the #FreeBritney movement.
In September 2020, court documents suggested Spears wanted the details of her conservatorship to remain unsealed in order to keep the #FreeBritney movement informed.
"Britney strongly believes it is consistent not only with her personal best interests but also with good public policy generally that the decision to appoint a new conservator of her estate be made in as open and transparent a manner as possible," the documents stated.
The documents went on to reject Jamie’s claims that the movement was a “joke” and added that, “Britney welcomes and appreciates the informed support of her many fans."
Spears has criticized the ‘Framing Britney Spears’ documentary.
After the release of "Framing Britney Spears," Spears took to Instagram to say that she “cried for two weeks” over its contents.
Spears said she hadn’t been able to watch the documentary, which examined her career, her place in the public eye and her struggles with mental illness.
“I didn’t watch the documentary but from what I did see of it I was embarrassed by the light they put me in,” she wrote.
Spears requested to speak to the court.
Court documents show Spears’s consistent attempts to speak for herself about the conservatorship and its impacts.
In April, her lawyer requested she be given a chance to address the court directly, per Spear’s request.
“The conservatee has requested that I seek from the court a status hearing at which she can address the court directly,” Ingham said.
Alice Kelly is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Catch her covering all things social justice, news, and entertainment. Keep up with her on Twitter for more.