Britney Spears’s Father Suspended as Conservator of Her Estate

A Los Angeles judge on Wednesday granted Britney Spears’s request and suspended her father as conservator in the legal arrangement that has governed her life for 13 years according to multiple reports. The ruling came just months after an extraordinary public hearing in June in which Spears described at length her desire for greater control over her life.

“I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive,” she said at the time. “I want to end the conservatorship without being evaluated.”

The June hearing came as Spears’s control of her own affairs had been at the center of renewed public interest. A long period of fan outcry spawned the #FreeBritney hashtag and a series of documentary investigations and news reports that brought greater public scrutiny to the conservatorship.

Spears’s father, Jamie, had been her conservator since 2008 when he sought the arrangement following his daughter’s public struggles with her mental health. He had said for years that his daughter had agreed to the arrangement, but Britney challenged that in the June hearing.

“I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m okay and I’m happy,” she said at the time. “If I said that enough, maybe I’d become happy.”

On Wednesday, Judge Brenda Penny essentially granted the singer’s request, naming accountant John Zabel as her new temporary conservator. Her lawyer, Matthew Rosengart, asked for a hearing to eventually terminate the conservatorship entirely, but has also sought an investigation into Jamie Spears’s actions while at its head.

 “The current situation is not tenable,” Penny said in delivering her decision, according to the New York Times.

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