Following the premiere of Framing Britney Spears, the singer had her first court hearing on Thursday, 11 Feb., to challenge her father Jamie Spears over the control of her conservatorship. Although Jamie will continue to have power over Britney’s finances and personal decisions, judge Brenda Penny ruled that he will have a joint conservatorship with financial services company Bessemer Trust.
Spears’s father has had sole control of his daughter’s estate since becoming her conservator in 2008. Since then, there have been no known objections from Britney until the rise of the #FreeBritney movement; thereafter Britney filed a petition to remove her father as a conservator in August 2020. Los Angeles judge Penny delegated Bessemer Trust as co-conservator in November 2020 and denied Britney’s petition to remove her father as conservator. Afterwards, Britney’s attorney Samuel Ingham accepted the co-conservatorship proposal and Penny has finally agreed to grant co-conservatorship roles to Jamie Spears and Bessemer Trust.
In a small win for the #FreeBritney movement, Spears’ attorney released a statement to Variety that Jamie Spears and Bessemer Trust will have “an equal division of responsibility, in the hopes that they would sit down and figure out together the best way to handle this complex estate for the benefit of my client.” He continued that “it’s no secret that my client does not want her father as co-conservator, but we recognise that removal is a separate issue.”
