Music

Britney Spears Went 'Crazy' And Courts Took Over Her Life -- Today She Couldn't Be More Successful

The conservatorship of Britney Spears has left her more successful than ever... but has it gone too far?

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SpearsIn 2008, Britney Spears was a hot mess at best and suffering from mental illness at worst. She locked herself in a cupboard, shaved off all of her hair, and actually married Kevin Federline. And, if you’ll forgive the disparaging of the serious problem of mental illness required to shoehorn the title of a Britney classic into the title, the courts looked at all these signs and determined that the pop star was saddled with the latter and seized control of her life.

And ever since Britney’s embraced the philosophy of CREAM — Courts Rule Everything Around [Her] — she’s hitting it out of the park. Did you realize she was the fifth-highest-earning female musician of 2015?[1] She’s still making bank through a Vegas residency and the continued popularity of her early work. She’s on the cusp of releasing a new album that could bring her even more wealth.

And yet she has ceded control of it all. In an interesting New York Times piece, Serge Kovaleski and Joe Coscarelli look at how Britney’s gotten her life on track by letting justice take the wheel.

According to the arrangement, which is typically used to protect the old, the mentally disabled or the extremely ill, Ms. Spears cannot make key decisions, personal or financial, without the approval of her conservators: her father, Jamie Spears, and a lawyer, Andrew M. Wallet. Her most mundane purchases, from a drink at Starbucks to a song on iTunes, are tracked in court documents as part of the plan to safeguard the great fortune she has earned but does not ultimately control.

Well, so long as someone has this on lockdown. Apparently her family didn’t heed the Internet’s advice and it worked out.

But like any good approximation of Behind the Music, “dark clouds are on the horizon” in this Times profile. As Spears increasingly gets her life on track, there are more rumblings that her conservatorship should end, though ominously no one really has an incentive to do so:

Ultimately some of the people who would help to decide whether to end it are the conservators and doctors who now help oversee it, many of whom receive fees from Ms. Spears’s estate for their work on her behalf.

…

And should Ms. Spears ask to be released, her cause would probably be led by the man the court appointed to be her chief advocate, a lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III. Mr. Ingham’s role is, among other things, to ensure that the conservators do not loot her assets, abuse their power or inappropriately restrict her freedom.

…

Mr. Ingham has been awarded more than $2 million in fees for his work on Ms. Spears’s behalf since 2008. This is in addition to the $6.9 million paid from the estate to the conservators and other lawyers who have helped manage Ms. Spears’s affairs under the current arrangement. Ms. Spears has never publicly questioned any of these payments, but critics of the process have.

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That sounds like a lot of money — and it is — but for a woman bringing in $31 million a year, having to spend $8 million over the course of the last 7 and a half years it’s chump change. And while Britney defenders have argued this arrangement leaves her overprotected and makes her a slave for her family and attorney, the results so far seem to suggest you shouldn’t hold it against them.

However, just as multimillionaire Tom Brady’s deflated pride has the positive side effect of opening the public’s eyes just a little to how drastically courts have tipped the scales in favor of arbitrators inflicting real monetary damage on ordinary people every day, Britney’s conservatorship should remind people that there are folks out there getting bled dry by conservatorships that they may no longer need. Last year, the Wall Street Journal detailed the rampant abuse in adult conservatorships, including one story of a woman who lost $470,000 of her $700,000 net worth over a 30-month stretch because of a guardianship. The real risk is that once the status is in place, regardless of any recovery, those incentivized to keep it going will keep it up ’til the world ends.

There aren’t any easy answers here. Britney’s experience with court-appointed conservatorship may chafe like a red catsuit, but it’s hard to argue with its success. And yet, that’s not necessarily a reason to applaud a potentially toxic system that concentrates far too much decision-making power into the hands of people with conflicts of interest. Sometimes you just need to take everything case by case.

Is Britney Spears Ready To Stand On Her Own? [New York Times]
Abuse Plagues System of Legal Guardians for Adults [Wall Street Journal]

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[1] The list says sixth, but counts Fleetwood Mac as a band ahead of her and no disrespecting Stevie, a band shouldn’t count here.

Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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