Britney Spears heads to court to contest conservatorship
Attorney Chris Melcher, joins Yahoo Finance to break down Britney Spears heading to court to contest her conservatorship and what’s next for Spears.
Video transcript
INTERVIEWER: Well, Britney Spears is headed to court to contest her conservatorship, but what is that exactly, and what does it mean for the pop star? We're joined now by attorney, Chris Melcher, to explain. So Chris, just break down for us, and for those at home that have no clue what this is, what is a conservatorship, and why exactly would Britney want to contest it?
CHRIS MELCHER: A conservatorship is placing control over an adult who is unable to care for themselves or resist fraud, undue influence, usually because of some developmental disability or maybe severe mental illness, that they need somebody else to protect them. And so the court would appoint somebody, it's often a relative, to take control of that person's life. And so here with Britney, she has a conservator over her person, meaning that would control where she can go and who she can see, depending on the level of the orders that are against her, and then also over her estate, which would mean entering into contracts, working, all those type of things that we would normally do for ourselves in a financial sense, would also be controlled by the conservator.
INTERVIEWER: Alexis, you're muted right now. All right, well, while she figures that out just a little bit, Chris, I just want to ask you, how does someone, celebrity or not, who finds themselves in a kind of situation where they are a part of a conservatorship, essentially get out of it? Do you have to do it through the courts only?
CHRIS MELCHER: Yes. The court places a conservatorship order, and so it would be the court to remove it. Now, some are done on a temporary basis and others are permanent. So someone who is under a permanent conservatorship would be expected to go on for a long time if they're developmentally disabled or they're not going to improve. Other folks need help for a short period of time, maybe a year or two, and with Britney, we certainly saw her in crisis 10 years ago. She needed help, and so the conservatorship may have been appropriate at that time, but only for so long as necessary. It's not clear to us in the public why the conservatorship would go on for so long for somebody who's able to work. Work is a high function, and so someone who's able to go out and do a Las Vegas residency, I don't know why they would need a conservatorship. So, that's a bit of a mystery to us because we don't have all the information. And so if she wants it to end, she has independent counsel in this proceeding, who is adverse to her dad, so I know that her attorney is independent, and so that attorney could just simply file a request to terminate the whole thing and she would be free of these restrictions. So far, she has not done so, but she is asking for her dad to be removed, and maybe the next step will be to get rid of the whole thing.
INTERVIEWER: So I know as part of this arrangement, I guess we could say, the conservator essentially does have final say and can control the person's finances. I'm curious to know if there's ever-- some kind of independent oversight, if you don't ever agree with your conservator, or if your conservator is not letting you, as might potentially be in this case, spend your money in ways that you wish, even if it's not necessarily frivolous, we'll say.
CHRIS MELCHER: Absolutely. The court in California has to annually review these conservatorships, and that can take different forms, but there should be some level of due diligence to see what is the status of this conservatee, do they need it? The court would hopefully be checking in and hearing directly from the conservatee, certainly reports from the conservator, and to see is this really necessary? Now, the relationship here is much like what we would see, parent/child. Here, this obviously is a parent/child relationship, but with a conservator, it's really like a parent making decisions on behalf of a young child. And so the court can intervene if the decisions are not being made properly. Certainly, the whole purpose of this arrangement is to protect somebody. So if they're not being protected and a court learns about that, they would step in. So far, we know that Britney does not want her dad to continue serving in this role, but we haven't seen allegations of any financial wrongdoing. At least I haven't seen financial wrongdoing allegations yet.
ALEXIS: I know this is probably just conjecture, but what do you think is next for Britney Spears? And it's been a long time since she's taken to the stage again. Do you think that's still in her future?
CHRIS MELCHER: Britney said she won't perform while her dad's the conservator, and I think the court should respect that. She shouldn't have to work if she doesn't want to work and, certainly, if the court's telling her that she's unable to make all these decisions by herself, then why should she be expected to work, and especially in an arrangement that she's unhappy with. So, I think that that's smart for her to take that position. She hopefully will return, and I'm just concerned for her well-being because there is so much attention on this. We all care for her. We want to understand what's going on. There's people that are really concerned that she is being controlled, and her voice needs to be heard, but the problem is that this is a highly personal matter. It's involving mental health, it's involving conflict with her father. So, although this is all well-intentioned to get this information out there, we're also putting her in a bind to either have to speak publicly about it and disclose all these things and the reasons why she may want a conservatorship to on go or to end, and I just don't think that that's healthy for her. So when this hearing happens in less than two hours, I'm really hoping that the court closes the courtroom and doesn't allow this to be publicly spread.
INTERVIEWER: You know, when I think about this, I think about, and I don't know if you've watched this, the Netflix film, "I Care a Lot", which also features a relationship and conservator who essentially is taking advantage of some of her clients. Curious to know, because, obviously everyone is quite interested in this case because Britney is a celebrity, how common some of these conservatorships really are, and how unusual it is for them to last a decade?
CHRIS MELCHER: I've heard a statistic that there's over a million people in the US under conservatorship. I don't know that that's accurate, but there are certainly a lot of people that are under it and, until now, there wasn't much attention. So it's a good thing that we are paying attention to this. Now, I'm sure in most all those cases, there's very good reason, and there should be an obvious reason why somebody needs a conservatorship. My test would be you should know within minutes of talking to somebody that they're unable to care for themselves. It should be that obvious. And we've all seen people that are in that level of need. And so, we can't just leave them alone. They need to be protected, and hopefully it's a relative and somebody who really cares is going to have that decision-making authority, but there's always going to be abuse potential. And this person who is in such need may not be able to communicate, and may not be able to have access to anyone outside of the home. And so they are vulnerable. And I'm hoping with all this attention that's on Britney's case that we will also be paying attention to other folks, the forgotten people who are under conservatorship, and that the court's going to be diligent in checking in and investigating and making sure that the people that we are trying to protect are actually protected.
And in terms of the length of this thing, if somebody has a developmental disability, they're going to be under protection for life, but somebody like this, I really don't understand why the conservatorship has lasted so long. Publicly available information does not explain why she's under a conservatorship. So I'm assuming that there is some private information that would explain it--
INTERVIEWER: Right.
CHRIS MELCHER: But from what we know as just normal watchers, it makes no sense.
INTERVIEWER: All right. Attorney, Chris Melcher. Thanks so much for joining us to break all of that down and explain.
