Britney Spears has finally felt free enough to begin speaking about the mistreatment she says she’s been subjected to because of her 13-year conservatorship, at the hands of many of the people closest to her. Earlier this week, the star spoke out against her mother, Lynne Spears, for the first time, and now the elder Spears is asking that the conservatorship pay her a pretty large amount of money for legal fees.
Well, it’s possible that the singer got word about what Lynne was planning to do, because Yahoo Entertainment is reporting that she’s now filed a petition asking that the conservatorship pay her more than $660,000 in legal fees. It was just a few days ago that Britney Spears posted (and later deleted) a rant online against Lynne Spears, as well as her former business manager, Lou Taylor, where she told her mom to “go fuck yourself.”
According to the document, which is 27 pages long, the superstar’s mother claims that she is the one who got things started with regards to having Spears’ dad, Jamie, whom she divorced in 2002, removed from her conservatorship, back in 2019. Her filing then goes on to document how she, as a “very concerned mother,” retained the services of two separate law firms, one in Louisiana and one in California, because of the “unreasonable restrictions under which [Britney] suffered.”
Those restrictions included things like Spears being “involuntarily moved from her home,” committed to “an extended stay in a medical facility against [her] will,” and not being allowed to go to Louisiana so that she could spend Christmas with her family. Her filing also notes that Lynne filled her attorneys in on her daughter being forced into “medical treatment that [Lynne] did not believe was warranted,” as well as detailing the “microscopic control” the pop icon had to live under and “reported that Britney was controlled by those in charge of her conservatorship sometimes providing and sometimes taking away things she desired.”
Many of the details shared in the filing are, in fact, things that the younger Spears herself has spoken about recently. It was just a few months ago when she talked in open court, and detailed many alleged abuses she’d had to deal with while under the conservatorship, which was fully controlled by her dad at the time Lynne retained her lawyers. For instance, Lynne’s filing made note of the many travel restrictions placed on her daughter, including the fact that she wasn’t allowed to drive. Spears was given that freedom back toward the end of July, and Jamie agreed to step down from the conservatorship in August, and was officially ousted by a judge at the end of September. According to her mother’s filing:
It is because Lynne's counsel questioned the adequacy of Jamie's competence to remain as conservator of the person...that for the first time in the 11th year conservatorship, real discussions began about limiting Jamie's involvement in the conservatorship.
Lynne Spears further states in her document that she hired her own attorneys because Britney wasn’t allowed to do so at the time, and that her only intent in doing it was to "help Britney achieve independence from her conservator father." Spears’ mother also noted that the songstress "enthusiastically agreed" to her retaining her own lawyers to assist in the case.
Considering her harsh words early in the week, it would seem that Britney Spears might not agree with her mother on the role she played in helping her achieve the increased freedoms she’s seen of late. It was just back in June that she said in court that she wished she could sue her entire family for profiting off of the conservatorship as she suffered. We won’t know the outcome of Lynne Spears’ filing until December 8, when the hearing will take place.
