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Britney Spears' conservatorship nightmare: How the pop star's father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life - and have held on to it for thirteen years
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- Title
- Britney Spears's Conservatorship Nightmare
- Authors
- The New Yorker
- Word count
- 11 257 words
I'm always wary of anyone who seems to diagnose a person's mental health situation from afar.
At least these two journalists flag their own personal opinions that color the piece openly:
That's a pretty controversial take for a journalist to make that affects the story they're working on. Why don't they follow up on this huge systemic issue in a large way?
There are so many people around Britney Spears who stand to gain or lose huge amounts of money, influence, second-hand celebrity and/or gained/lost ethos based on this matter that they aren't dispassionate witnesses. Everyone interviewed is a player in the case.
A lot of people who respect personal privacy won't speak out either, so we can expect those who are on the record in the case not to be representative of everyone who could be called to witness.
It's telling that media aren't reporting that they reach out to the conservators for comment. Further, media outlets aren't sharing what unanswered questions that leaves, nor specifying what claims of misdoing are left uncountered in the piece.
At least this piece is slightly better on doing some due diligence, but for this many thousand words, it's extremely one-sided and uncritical of the sources quoted.
But hey, for some reason this story has somehow transcended celebrity gossip and leaked court proceedings in the view of some otherwise serious outlets.
Even then, if this is the start of critical journalism on the "underregulated part of the legal system" that conservatorship is claimed to be, why is the follow up only about Britney Spears and not about the system, the laws and other examples of this apparently easily misused, lawless system that lets one of the weakest groups in society be preyed upon without recourse!
According to these reports, Spears is even on the very high functioning level, what about those who are under conservatorship that are much worse off and less equipped to asserting their own personhood and influencing the course of their very own lives?
My hunch is that it is just a celebrity gossip story and that couching it as something more drives the outrage for people who otherwise wouldn't get involved in diagnosing someone's mental health from afar.
Disability activists have been paying close attention to Spear's case for quite some time; while this article may not elaborate on the wider issue, it's definitely being talked about elsewhere.
Two articles that might interest you:
Basically the main opinion I've seen is that 1) Spear's situation is emblematic of the problems faced be many disabled people, 2) some people do actually need this much help in their lives, such as those with dementia, 3) but many people are forced into a highly restrictive legal "death" when less restrictive options that could support them to make decisions would be better.
I very much disagree that this is a "gossip" story. Conservatorships are a disability rights issue. I personally don't think Spears needs one, but that isn't based on an armchair diagnosis — it's based on the fact that I think they should be a last resort, and the fact that she's able to speak about her wishes in court which indicates a level of competency higher than "incapacitated by dementia." She might be seriously mentally ill, I have no idea, but there are other ways to support her (if needed) that don't involve powers such as the ability to involuntarily sterilize her (non-permanently).
Edit: I'm also not convinced that we need a deep dive into someone's personal medical records to decide if they (and disabled people in general) deserve certain rights.
I feel like you're making this a little easy to simply say "Everyone in this story has something to lose and something to gain, therefore we cannot believe a side."
It looks strange to me to remove a person's legal rights to self-determination, and then spend 13 long years exploiting that person's fame for what is, honestly, a ridiculous amount of money. Right now, this is a big shitfest of he-said-she-said, but the defence of "we're doing it for her mental health" is weak to me if you're then gaining financially from it massively. The people in charge of the guardianship are and should absolutely be on the defensive here, because they need to justify why it's okay that they are controlling another person's life. Spears has requested that this thing happens in public, and after such a long time, it looks to me like she might've tried getting rid of it privately but found no way to do so and is now going public with it in the hopes that it will allow her to go free, sort of like #MeToo. Every other interaction she has with the public is filtered. She does not control her social media accounts, speaking in public court seems to be the only option she has left.
This would be one of those subjects you could do a very good investigative piece on and view the subject from all angles. At the same time, maybe there's a reason other than the ease of writing articles supporting Spears, if the conservators are not commenting, then we don't have much else to go on.
How do you know that the defense of "doing it for her mental health" is weak?
Spears' medical records aren't public. All the court documents from years of litigation aren't public.
I completely agree that it'd be silly to draw a false equivalence and assume everyone's biased, so we can pick and choose who to believe.
That's why I said something completely different:
Here I disagree passionately. We could have real investigative journalism. The journalists would then "cross examine" the view they're putting on record since they can't get the other side on record. They'd be devil's advocates and explore alternatives and what the other side might say.
Here's an example:
We could look at a number of things (again, since we aren't psychiatrists, and even if we were shouldn't diagnose someone from afar.)
I'm worried that people are getting only one side presented, and they're going with only that one side.
It's very possible that Spears could be taken advantage of by her conservators. But unless people have some incredible non-public access available to them, Britney Spears could very well be in need of conservatorship. That's a real possibility. This is a huge, high profile case, which is when the justice system is often works better than it does for normal people without the same resources.
Something worth noting is that even if we assume she is in serious need of support, a conservatorship is an unusual and fairly extreme way of providing it. That fact alone is cause for some suspicion of the arrangement.
I watched a good Legal Eagle video about it the other day - he points out that power of attorney would have served a similar purpose without representing such a total transfer of rights.
Power of attorney is completely different to conservatorship. They don't fulfill the same role.
Generally speaking:
Simply put, power of attorney can't normally bind someone against their will. Even if clauses in the contract seem to suggest otherwise, they are usually found to be nonbinding when tested in court.
I'm no expert - far from it, in fact - so I'm largely going on what the video said (relevant timestamp). The time voluntarily spent in rehab and psychiatric institutions suggests that a similarly voluntary legal arrangement might have worked out well, although I guess we've got a bit of a catch-22 around the "of sound mind" part of that approach.
Both things need not be at odds. But to have someone have tremendous power over her who stands to gain off her, while also having little oversight, is a conflict of interest I don't want anyone to find themselves in.
I mean, why can't she have an independent, professional conservator appointed, who will then review what is actually best for her, meanwhile being scrutinized by another entity such that he/she doesn't profit unduly? Seems like a simple ask, particularly considering the amount of wealth we can assume Spears has. Her father has financial reasons to be invested in her career, not her mental health.
Wasn't that was Spears was pushing for to begin with?
Because they are absolutely in a position where they can exploit the conservatorship for money, and to me it looks like they have. I have been on a stage performing a few times in my life, and even if it was just in front of a couple dozen friends and acquaintances, that shit is stressful. Grand tourneys with no downtime, big shows in Vegas, etc. it is not a place you would put someone who is mentally fragile to the point of needing a conservatorship. We're not talking about using music to heal yourself, we're talking about performing in front of very large audiences every day. That shit is stressful. You can't have both. Either she is mentally fit to do these performances and live with the stress or she isn't. The issues Spears is described as having would only be
The fact that she is not seeing any of the money she is earning, except for a 2k/week allowance while she is worth ~60 mill, makes it even worse.
Probably, but not doing it for the money and being stripped of your legal rights because of mental issues and still performing and earning that money for basically someone else are two very different things.
The only people who have determined that so far have been intricatly linked to the people who are her legal guardians. And as I said, I can't disconnect the two things "not being able to take care of herself" and "doing very stressful performances for years"
Yeah but if that is the case (and considering Spears herself wants everything to go public) I wonder why the other side hasn't come out with their reasons for the guardianship then? It's Spears' personal details after all, allow competent journalists to present both sides then, because if the NYT is even throwing themselves on Spear's side, maybe there's something to it.
My experience with concert musicians and people I know in professional bands and acquaintances who do live tv or radio is that some people live for having an audience and feed off playing. The bigger crowd the better. Some have taken puse measurements of themselves that strongly indicate they aren't stressed before going on, nor in front of crowds of hundreds, thousands and in at least one case a couple million people.
I will point out that if Spears' mental state is one where she can't take care of herself, your last argument is nonsensical. In that case, not sharing her personal details cannot be taken as an argument against the conservators. The argument only works if she is in a mental state where she doesn't need a conservatorship:
The courts have determined Spears requires a conservatorship.
Correct.
And the circumstances surrounding this initial implementation have been been strange as well. It all went extremely fast, and again, a conservatorship is the last resort and most extreme measure of stripping someone of their rights, and the fact that Spears has a successful career with numerous well paying gigs, multiple world tours included, points to the fact that she can take care of herself above the threshold which would justify a conservatorship. Being addicted or "bad with money" or "irresponsible" are no justification for one.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one mate, I do however hope as well that more information is released so we can paint a better picture of the situation.
Spears has also said that the lawyer appointed to her by the court (who she was forced to pay 10k USD/week) had not informed her that the ball was in her court to petition the court for the conservatorship to end, and since her conservators had, at every turn, stopped her from getting her own legal representation, she had not been properly informed about the situation.
I suspect this happens in other cases, too. Legal systems are hard enough to navigate normally... When you have absolutely no control over your life or money, information is kept from you, and you may need a little extra help with this sort of thing (if your disability does affect that), what hope do you have fighting it?