MovieChat Forums > Britney Spears Discussion > What is conservatorship? Who gets conse...

What is conservatorship? Who gets conserved?

posted 4 years ago by Otter (24464)
8 replies | jump to latest

A conservatorship is when a judge rules that a person is not competent to care for themselves or manage their own affairs, and will not be competent any time in the near future. People cannot be put on conservatorship because they're on drugs, going through a bad patch or having a breakdown, or have a treatable disorder like severe depression. People get put under conservatorship because they have severe, long-term or incurable disorders, like disabling brain injuries, degenerative diseases of the brain like dementia, are too developmentally delayed to be independent, or have severe, disabling, long-term mental illnesses like schizophrenia. The legal criteria for putting a person under conservatorship are very strict, and no honest judge would put a person under conservatorship just because they'd been on drugs or had a public breakdown.

Now it has long been rumored that Britney's main problem is bipolar disorder, and most people with bipolar disorder are not under conservatorship. If they are rational part of the time or able to stay completely rational with the right medications, they are legally free to make their own decisions - including the decision to stop taking medication and ruin their lives when the next manic or depressive episode hits. So that's the big question regarding Britney - is her bipolar disorder really so severe that she's unable to run her own life? (Yes, some cases are that severe.) Or are does she have health issues in addition to the bipolar disorder that make her incompetent, or have the judges overstepped their authority? Because it's pretty unlikely that she's just better, none of the conditions that can get a person conserved are likely to get better.

So this isn't really my field or anything, I'm not a professional conservator or a lawyer, but since I seem to know more about conservation than most people on this board... so what the hell.

[–] NGMI (1184) 4 years ago

Her family does not want her mental health to be public information and they have every right. So stop speculating and just pretend she is a full blown autist. She lives in the basement, playing with her train set while her parents bring her tendies.

[–] kukuxu (5409) 4 years ago

You're "missing" the part where her father is charging her $200,000 per year and the legal team is charging $1M per year. And that doesn't include the money they're siphoning out, since she can't control or audit her finances and contracts. We're talking about likely several millions per year. That's lasted more than 10 years, it's a lot of money.

She has two problems. One, nature made her bipolar. Two, the judge made her a cashcow.

She's almost 40. She wanted to marry, retire and have children, and she has money enough to do it. Sounds like a good plan. Instead of it, her tutors decided to force her into a medical procedure that prevents her from getting pregnant, then signed more contracts and forced her to keep working and making, or better said milking, millions.

What's happening here is not a healthy therapy. It's forced labor. It's the very definition of slavery.

And seeing you supporting it, that's kind of interesting. You, who often rant about slavery in US a couple of centuries ago, here you are openly supporting slavery in present day.

[–] davodikum (6202) 4 years ago

I completely agree. It's fucked up what's going on. it's bloody criminal.

[–] Otter (24464) 4 years ago

The "slavery" issue is why the laws defining conservatorship are incredibly strict, so that the process can only be applied to people who are never going to be care for themselves or make rational decisions - the typical person under conservatorship is developmentally delayed or an elder who no longer recognizes their own family members. Conservatorship is not supposed to be used to keep people from making bad decisions or from throwing their lives or careers away of their own free will, as everyone seems to be assuming is going on here, if the judges have done their job correctly then there's more wrong with Britney than a typical case of bipolar disorder.

Now I would agree with you that it seems the Spears family has mismanaged the conservatorship and ought to be paying more attention to Britney's wishes (not about the pregnancy, though), and one possible outcome of this case is that they will be removed as conservators and someone else will be put in charge of her medical and financial decisions. BUT... the fact that Britney is unhappy with the conservatorship and her family's treatment of her does NOT mean that she doesn't need someone else to make decisions for her, she may genuinely need a decision-maker for the rest of her life. For whatever reason she may genuinely lack the capacity to make decisions and life like a normal person, nobody commenting on this case knows exactly what's going on with her, and at this point neither does the judge because Spears is refusing to take a standard court mental health evaluation.

I have no real idea if she really needs a conservator, neither does anyone else on this board or anywhere else on the internet. My intention with this post was not to support the conservatorship, just to explain what conservatorhip really is and why it exists. Because nobody else here seems to have a clue.

[–] kukuxu (5409) 4 years ago

The "slavery" issue is why the laws defining conservatorship are incredibly strict, so that the process can only be applied to people who are never going to be care for themselves or make rational decisions

Well, it seems that those strict laws haven't prevented her from becoming an exploited cashcow. Of course, she couldn't make rational decisions, so those strict laws allowed her appointed tutors to make rational decisions in her behalf, and very rationally they decided to put her into forced labor so they could milk money out of her, which is the definition of slavery. It was rational, and it's still slavery.

People who support slavery don't support it because they're very evil and they want to do evil things. That's just a movie modern trope. They're normal people who just rationalize that it's OK for whatever reasons... which is exactly what you're doing.

What's more, while in Western and Asian countries slavery happened only during limited periods of time, in Africa it has existed for the last two millennia (at least). It seems that Black culture is the one that accepts its better, it seems that slavery fits just fine in your system of values.

A bit of decoration, some rationalization and you happily jumped into the pro-slavery train. Who would have imagined, huh?

[–] Otter (24464) 4 years ago

There's two legal issues here:
1) Is Britney Spears sick or dysfunctional enough to really need conservatorship, and if she does
2) Is her family managing the conservatorship competently.

Right now my answers to these questions would be:
1) I don't know, you don't know, nobody talking about this on the internet knows exactly what her problems are and how severe they are, and
2) Hell to the no! They've made some totally inappropriate decisions, seemingly because they want more money coming in!

And again, my intent wasn't to support the conservatorship specifically or in general, but to explain what it is, why it exists, and how it works. Because nobody here gets that, expecially this guy who keeps harping on about slavery.

[–] Freword (339) 4 years ago

Not likey

[–] Iffy762 (1334) 4 years ago

There are a few things that worry me about her situation. One is that in her testimony she said that she wanted to have private therapy in her own home and found it humiliating to have to go out in public to a known location where papparazzi would be waiting for her. She is a wealthy woman so having her therapy in her own home seems eminently affordable. Also, having privacy in her therapy would be good for her mental health. Having people publicly watching you attend your therapy sessions would be very stressful and humiliating. Why was she not allowed to have her therapy in her own home?

Second, is the seeming conflicts of interest between the people who are paid by her. Her fortune is apparently used to pay a number of people who are in charge of her, but she has no power to hire or fire any of these people, and their evidence is what the court sees to decide on her fate. If she is evaluated for mental functioning, who pays for that? On its face, this seems like a structure with high potential for conflicts of interest.

The third is that despite her being seemingly incapable of any independent actions, she has done multiple complex performances during her conservatorship. If she is so impaired, how can she perform so successfully? If, under her conservatorship, she cannot make any decisions for herself, from whether to replace her kitchen cabinets to whether to have an IUD or go for a drive with her boyfriend, then this must mean that her conservator(s) is/are making the decision for her to perform. Performances from which her income is partially directed to them. What is going on there?

There are several other things that bother me but these are several. I am wondering about the external oversight. Is it just one judge? That does not seem like a lot of oversight for such a large amount of money and extensive level of control over a human being's life and body.