Detailing Britney Spears’ Struggle

SAMANTHA STARK, DIRECTOR, “FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS”: The day before the hearing, we published an investigation. We obtained confidential documents showing that Britney had been saying this for years to the court. All the hearings were sealed. But our documents show that she’s telling the investigators, she’s telling the judge, she’s telling her lawyers that she wants to terminate the conservatorship immediately, that she wants to — at one point, she said she wanted to retire and get married. This is in 2014. So everything she was saying yesterday was echoing what we had found was true. So we had evidence to back up that she actually had brought this to the court. She said in court: I didn’t know I could file a petition to remove it. She has a lawyer that was assigned to her by the court, because she was deemed incapable of hiring her own, who clearly did not communicate to her, even though she kept saying I want the term — I want this over, I want this over, that she could do that. It was — that was the most shocking part to me. Can you imagine being in this for 13 years and not knowing you even had — like, feeling — just feeling ignored? She said at one point — she told the judge in 2019 that she had been forced into a mental health facility against her will, forced to take lithium against her will, which he had never taken. She felt like that was a retaliation against her for standing up for herself in a rehearsal. She said she was forced to perform against her will and said she was — she said it was trafficking. She felt like she was a human trafficking victim. And she said she said all that in 2019. And she said to the judge, and I — that she didn’t do anything then. She said: I felt like I was dead. I felt like I didn’t matter.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And she also said some shocking things that I still don’t understand how is even possible, the fact that she has to have somebody watch her 24/7, that the people there are with her when she has to take her medication. And she got very personal. She said that she was prevented from having an IUD removed when she wanted to have a family and move on. This is a 39- year-old woman. And I guess the question that so many are asking is, how is this even possible that our judicial system, that our laws would allow for something like this to take place? Can you walk us through the backstory of this conservatorship?

STARK: You know, so, conservatorships are this very, very extreme and restrictive legal arrangement where a person is deemed incapable of making– being able to provide food, clothing and shelter for themselves. And they’re — in California, we have something that’s extreme with the — with finances, which is undue influence. So, if someone is deemed that they could be susceptible to undue influence, to somebody influencing how they spend their money,