Britney Spears has been fighting to end the conservatorship on her person and estate ever since it began, and the Netflix documentary Britney vs. Spears reveals previously unknown details about her situation. Filmmaker Erin Lee Carr stated that she originally wanted to make the documentary with journalist Jenny Eliscu about Britney's portrayal in the media, but that quickly changed with each discovery they made. The Netflix documentary unveiled confidential documents, texts, a voicemail, and interviews that shared new information about Britney's struggles with her father, Jamie Spears.
The film describes conservatorship as a legal process for taking away a person's ability to make their own decisions. On February 1, 2008, a temporary conservatorship began that granted Jamie full power over decisions regarding Britney's personal life such as who she spent time with and when, and shared power over decisions regarding her estate with a court-appointed attorney. Jamie immediately began making choices that seemed to go against Britney's wishes, such as re-hiring a manager that she had fired the year before, and making it difficult for her to do even the simplest things like visit a local burger joint with her ex-fiancé, Jason Trawick. Britney's financial decisions were under her father's control despite the substantial amount of money the singer continued to earn. The following year, Jamie's request that the conservatorship be made permanent was granted.
Britney was miserable under the conservatorship from the moment it began, and in June 2021 she publicly addressed the court to plead for them to end the arrangement. In September of that year, Jamie was finally removed as conservator. Britney's struggles have inspired multiple investigative pieces and documentaries, and the latest, Britney vs. Spears, uncovered never before seen information about the singer during the 13 years her father controlled her life. Here are some of the biggest reveals from the Netflix documentary.
Normally, conservatees are supposed to be given a 5 days' notice of the conservatorship before it goes into effect. This gives the person time to challenge the decision if they choose to do so. However, Britney was deprived of this notification. Her former manager, Sam Lutfi, claimed he'd been framed as a danger to Britney in order to speed along the conservatorship's approval. Once Jamie was established as conservator, he would have the power to keep Sam and any other unapproved persons away from his daughter. Knowing that Britney would have fought the court if she was notified in advance, Jamie's legal team claimed Sam was drugging her food and needed to be separated from Britney immediately. In his interview for the Netflix documentary, Sam said it was clearly a lie since Britney always passed her drug tests while working with him, but they needed a scapegoat to put the conservatorship in place as quickly as possible — before Britney had the chance to stop it.
Among the documents Britney vs. Spears accessed was a medical report from 2008 that listed Britney's condition as being related to dementia. The report claimed Britney “lacks the capacity to understand or manage her financial affairs without being subject to undue influence.” Erin Carr tracked down the doctor who allegedly first evaluated her in 2008, a now-retired elderly psychiatrist who refused to admit that he had ever met Britney. He did state that most of his conservatorship cases sought to protect the conservatee from a predatory individual after their money. Interestingly, during the same time these medical documents were filed, Britney was working on How I Met Your Mother. In the documentary, Jenny Eliscu questioned how someone that ill could possibly be able to work.
Britney's court-appointed attorney, Samuel Ingham, claimed that she never sought different legal representation, but in actuality, she did so twice. When the conservatorship first began, Britney attempted to employ her own attorney, but the court determined that she did not have the mental capacity to hire her own counsel and provided one for her instead. According to the film, no law exists to grant conservatees the power to choose their own lawyer, a loophole that makes it even more difficult to challenge a conservatorship ruling. In 2009, Britney tried once again to acquire a different lawyer.
Sam Lutfi, who is a producer on movies such as Under the Silver Lake, along with Britney's former boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, worked together to try to help, but since neither of them were allowed near her, they went to Jenny Eliscu, who had previously met Britney while writing a cover story for Rolling Stone. Jenny smuggled a document detailing Britney's lack of confidence in her attorney and her request for a new one into a hotel bathroom, where Britney's bodyguards couldn't see. The singer met her there and quickly signed her name, but unfortunately, their efforts were not successful. Jenny explained, “It had been ruled that she lacked capacity to choose her own lawyer." They also doubted whether the secret signing was even Britney's signature.
Before the conservatorship began, Adnan Ghalib stated that Britney, like many others, used to take Adderall. Beginning in 2008, the conservatorship oversaw any and all medications she took, and medical records revealed that her dosage was increased on the days that she was working. These records state that Jamie and the team appreciated the benefits stimulants gave to her while performing, but Jamie also did not want her taking anything at all. This contradiction was allegedly never resolved, though Jamie continued to closely monitor her medication usage. When Britney decided to take a break before starting a new Vegas show in 2019, her medication was abruptly changed. She was put on a new medication that was very different from what she had been taking for the last 5 years. Britney also claimed in April 2019 that she had been placed into a mental health facility against her will.
Jamie and his legal team maintained that Britney never asked for the conservatorship to be ended despite evidence to the contrary. Britney stated more than once that her main fear was losing access to her two sons, who she shares custody of with her ex-husband, Kevin Federline. Hopefully, removing her father as conservator will enable her to spend more time with them and also be able to start rebuilding her life.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3vftgat
0 Comments