Britney Spears
Valerie Macon | AFP | Getty images
Two Republican lawmakers called for a hearing to investigate legal conservatories, citing pop star Britney Spears’ widely reported arrangement involving her father as curator of her estate.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Asked Chairman Jerrold Nadler, DN.Y., to schedule a hearing to investigate potentially unjust conservatories in a letter released Monday and on Twitter Tuesday.
The Spears Conservatory has garnered attention in recent weeks after The New York Times aired a documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” about the so-called Free Britney movement. Activists involved in the movement allege that Spears is being falsely held in a conservatorship by her father, who is in control of her finances. While Spears has rarely commented on the conservatorship, recent lawsuits have reportedly shown that she has asked for her father to be removed as the sole curator.
Conservatories are used to assign financial or personal decisions to another person in case a person cannot make them on their own. The Spears Conservatory is unusual for how young she was when it was imposed and how long it lasted. Conservatories are most commonly used in cases of mental disability or dementia that prevent a person from making their own sound decisions.
Spears was in her late twenties when a court approved her conservatorship in 2008. That came after a series of high-profile incidents that led the public to question her mental health condition, and stints in rehab and a mental hospital.
“Given the constitutional freedoms at stake and the opacity of these regulations, it is up to our committee to convene a hearing to investigate whether Americans are improperly held in conservatories,” wrote Jordan and Gaetz.
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