The judge overseeing Britney Spears’ controversial conservatorship has ruled that the musician’s father, Jamie Spears, will not be removed from his position as a co-conservator on her estate. Per Variety, this ruling comes a week after Spears re-ignited both interest, and outrage, over the conditions of her conservatorship—which places outside controls on her finances, her living circumstances, and even her medical care—by testifying in open court for the first time in several years, calling the arrangement “abusive.”
For the record—and because the circumstances surrounding Spears’ 13-years-and-counting lack of control over the details of her own life have become extremely complicated over that period—it’s worth noting where things currently stand with the multiple conservatorships surrounding her, both the personal conservatorship, and the one set to handle her finances. Jamie Spears originally served as both the personal and financial conservator (along with a lawyer, Andrew Wallet) for his daughter, for a period spanning from 2008 to 2019, when health issues forced him to step back from the personal role. A woman named Jodi Montgomery was then named as Spears’ personal conservator; a year later, Judge Brenda Penny set a company called Bessemer Trust to serve as financial co-conservator, with Jamie Spears, over Britney’s money. In fact, the actual point of the legal proceedings that set off this latest surge of public opinion was to establish Bessemer as a permanent partner on the arrangement, ensuring, among other things, that Jamie Spears wouldn’t have exclusive control over his daughter’s wealth.
Judge Penny declared today that Bessemer Trust was now a permanent co-conservator—but also noted that she had denied a request to have Jamie Spears removed from that same position. So, to be clear: Britney Spears’ personal conversatorship, covering day-to-day and medical decisions, is in the hands of Jodi Montgomery. Her financial conservatorship, controlling use of her considerable fortune, is in the hands of her father, and Bessemer Trust. Hopefully that’s at least somewhat transparent
Of course, there’s still another argument brewing at the back of all this, because Montgomery and Jamie Spears are also in a public sparring match about whose conservatorship Britney is most upset by. Jamie Spears claimed (per People) that Montgomery is responsible for his daughter’s “suffering,” since, as personal conservator, she’s supposedly responsible for things like the shocking revelation that Spears has been disallowed from having an IUD removed so that she can have more children. Montgomery (through an attorney) responded that, as the controller of his daughter’s money, Jamie Spears is the one with the actual power in the arrangement. Britney herself, meanwhile, was fairly unclear in her testimony about which of her conservators she put responsibility on, although she was unambiguous about one thing: She absolutely wants the arrangement to come to an end.