by Anita Schnee, Attorney at Law
For those who might not know, Britney Spears is a wildly successful pop singer who got her start in show business at the age of eight in the Mickey Mouse Club. No small wonder, then, that around twenty-six years later she was reported as having a bit of an emotional melt-down and ended up spending some time in an institution.
At that time, given that she couldn’t care for herself and her children, a court appointed her father, James Spears, to the role of “conservator.” This gave him complete control over Britney’s finances, health care, and negotiation of business deals. A conservatorship is a legal arrangement for situations like Ms. Spears’s, or for those who are underage or are experiencing age-related disabilities.
At first the Spears conservatorship was temporary, but it was extended year after year, despite that Ms. Spears continued to appear as an entertainer over many of those years. The Spears family began to show some stress in the arrangement, however, and now Ms. Spears is seeking to have the conservatorship terminated. Her struggles have become even more public with the release of a documentary film that has sparked widespread indignation about her situation.
The latest development, after a court hearing on Thursday February 11, 2021, is that the judge declined to permit Mr. Spears sole authority to invest Britney’s money, so he continues to share that authority equally with a professional co-conservator.
What does this have to do with us ordinary folk? It is an object lesson on why it is so crucial to prepare an estate plan in advance, if you should ever become unable to manage your own affairs. That way you keep your own choice of whom you would want to care for you. Otherwise, without an estate plan, you would very likely end up in court. As you can see from Britney’s case, the loss of control can be devastating and conservatorships can be difficult to get out of, once you no longer need them.
You might not have had a decades-long show business career from which to recover, but accidents and severe illness can happen to any of us.
