20 years ago, in one of her biggest hits, Britney Spears proclaimed that she felt like a slave. Thanks to the efforts of her fans and her own testimony, her father, Jamie Spears, has renounced control of her legal guardianship.
#FreeBritney is a reality today. Britney Spears's father, Jamie Spears, announced through his lawyer that he is renouncing continuing to be her legal guardian after 13 years of absolute control over any detail of the star's personal and professional life. of pop. In the documents, Jamie confirms that he delegates that function to another person, which would not completely annul Britney's guardianship, but her parent would be left out of it.
The singer's request in court would be fulfilled as indicated in the reports. «(Jamie Spears) does not believe that a public confrontation with his daughter over her continuing service as his guardian is in his best interest. "Mr. Spears intends to work with the Court and his daughter's new attorney to prepare an orderly transition to a new guardian."
Mathew Rosengart, the artist's new lawyer, released a statement expressing the success of the news. , We are pleased that Mr. Spears and his lawyer have admitted in an official act that he should be removed. It's a vindication for Britney. "We look forward to continuing our aggressive investigation into the conduct of Ms. Spears and others over the past 13 years while he (Jamie Spears) extracted millions of dollars from her daughter's fortune."
Ten police cars, six helicopters, two ambulances and a fire truck surrounded her Hollywood Hills mansion. Britney Spears suffered a nervous breakdown and refused to hand over her children Jayden James and Sean Preston, ages 1 and 2, to her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, as planned. The disgraced pop princess, then 26 years old, locked herself in the bathroom with the youngest of her children and forced a police operation that would last four hours. She ended up leaving there in an ambulance and, a few days later, custody of the children was legally removed from her. That night of January 4, 2008, marked the beginning of a hell that, after 13 years, has come to an end.
Months before that event, two images had been etched in the collective imagination as a symbol of her personal decline. On the one hand, Britney with a shaved head facing the paparazzi who were chasing her; on the other hand, the presentation of Gimme More at the MTV Awards where she seemed disoriented, very far from the spectacularity with which she performed at the same gala, but six years before, she performed I'm a slave 4 U with a python on her shoulders. “If Britney made it through 2007, you can make it through anything,” went a famous slogan that was printed on thousands of mugs and T-shirts. Sadly, it wasn't true.
The failure of her marriage to Federline, the death of her aunt, and the fierce persecution of the press had pushed her toward instability. Drugs, bad company, and worse decisions would do the rest. It was the perfect storm to take her to rehab and then take away the reins of her life through a legal tool known as guardianship, which in the United States is applied to extreme cases of disability, people in comas, or people with serious mental illnesses.
I am not going to act while my father controls what he wears, does, says, or thinks. "I prefer to share videos recorded in my living room."
From that moment on, Britney has not been able to choose the songs for her next albums or pay for a coffee at Starbucks with her own credit card. Her father, Jamie Spears, has controlled both her career and finances and her personal life. It was a temporary measure that became permanent because, in theory, it improved her chances of regaining custody of her children. He also sought to separate Britney from her manager, Sam Lufti, whose influence remains unclear; The singer's family claims that he drugged her and had enormous control over her, while he maintains that he was only trying to protect her. In the 2008 documentary Britney: For the Record, Spears tearfully claimed that guardianship was like being in jail, but knowing that it would never end.
If it was known that the singer had been living in those conditions since then, why has a popular outcry crystallized in the #FreeBritney movement now broken out? The singer's team strove to project the image that she had managed to redirect her personal life, away from addictions and bad influences. Also, her current career was a succession of successes: four albums, three world tours, a residency in Las Vegas with 248 concerts, perfume lines, jury on the X Factor program...
Permanent guardianship had been forgotten because the job seemed to give her the stability she needed and fans believed she was happy. It was unknown then that her legal incapacity was prohibited from any interview. In fact, her team forced her intervention on Jonathan Ross's show to be edited to censor her. Britney was a money-making machine while her will was silenced. Then, in April 2019, the alarms went off.
