The New Yorker: “Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare”

Photograph by Arvida Byström for The New Yorker; Source photograph from Getty

For the next twenty minutes, Spears described how she had been isolated, medicated, financially exploited, and emotionally abused. She assigned harsh blame to the California legal system, which she said let it all happen. She added that she had tried to complain to the court before but had been ignored, which made her feel like I was dead, she said—like I didn’t matter. She wanted to share her story publicly, she said, instead of it being a hush-hush secret to benefit all of them. She added, It concerns me I’ve been told I’m not allowed to expose the people who did this to me. At one point, she told the court, All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and for my boyfriend to drive me in his fucking car.

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According to Jonathan Martinis, the senior director for law and policy at a center for disability rights at Syracuse University, one of the most dangerous aspects of guardianships is the way that they prevent people from getting their own legal counsel. The rights at stake in guardianship are analogous to the rights at stake in criminal cases, Martinis said. Britney could have been found holding an axe and a severed head, saying I did it, and she still would’ve had the right to an attorney. So, under guardianship, you don’t have the same rights as an axe murderer.

Ronan Farrow & Jia Tolentino

For a country that prides itself for treating all citizens equally in the eyes of the law, examples such as these are a complete disgrace – and in California no less, one of the most progressive states. For more than a decade, Britney Spears has lived in a state of effective servitude, lacking even the right to challenge the legal ruling that gave her father complete control over her life – and there are certainly many people in similar situations, but without the same public exposure. Despite its idealized self-image, on closer inspection the US justice system shows numerous flaws that allow some people to ignore the system – as Donald Trump has done for years – while others are punished beyond the measure of their actions.

The idea that Spears needs this conservatorship to function is, to some degree, self-reinforcing. In that respect, experts said, her case is common. Martinis, the disability-rights lawyer, said that many guardianships can prove inescapable, which is why they are vulnerable to abuse. In the extreme cases, he said, the strategy is isolate, medicate, liquidate. You isolate them, medicate them to keep them quiet, liquidate the assets. If a conservatee functions well under conservatorship, it can be framed as proof of the arrangement’s necessity; if a conservatee struggles under conservatorship, the same conclusion can be drawn. And if a conservatee gets out, and stumbles into crisis or manipulation—a likelihood increased by time spent formally disempowered—this, too, might reinforce the argument for their prior legal restraints. Our mistakes make us who we are, and teach us who we can be, Martinis said. Without bad choices, we can’t be wholly human. And with the best of intentions, we say to people with disabilities: we’ll keep you from ever making a mistake. He added, Should Britney get out, just watch. The first mistake she makes, fingers will wag, and people will say this would never have happened if she were under guardianship.