Britney Spears’ court battle with her father continues, and now it seems like it will affect the singer’s career.
A Los Angeles judge declined a request from the pop star to remove her father as conservator of her estate during a hearing on Tuesday, the New York Times reported. And Spears’ lawyer says that she will not perform as long as her father, Jamie Spears, remains in the conservator role.
“My client has informed me that she is afraid of her father,” Spears’ attorney, Samuel D. Ingham III, told the judge during Tuesday’s hearing, according to The Associated Press. “She will not perform again if her father is in charge of her career.”
However, Jamie Spears’ attorney, Vivian Lee Thoreen, called Ingham’s statement “hearsay” and argued that he had a perfect record as conservator, which has led to Britney Spears’ net worth to grow to $60 million after previously being in debt, according to the AP.
During the hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny accepted one of Britney Spears’ requests and named the Bessemer Trust, a corporate fiduciary, as her estate’s co-conservator, according to the Times. She also indicated that she would consider future petitions for Jamie Spears’ removal as conservator “down the road.”
The controversial conservatorship has been in place since 2008 after the pop star suffered a public mental breakdown, and has placed her father in a guardian role over Spears herself and her finances, according to USA Today.
Spears has not spoken out publicly on the terms of the conservatorship, and it was not until this year that she began to press for her father’s removal, according to USA Today.
But in court documents, Spears claimed that if her father remained as conservator, she believed he intended “to retain full functional control of her assets, books and records in the face of Britney’s objections,” the AP reported.
Ingham also argued during Tuesday’s hearing that Spears is a “high-functioning conservatee” and that she ought to be informed of her father’s decisions — which Ingham said Jamie Spears has not done, according to the AP.
Some of Spears’ fans have claimed for some time that Jamie Spears holds too much control over his daughter’s life, and have formed the #FreeBritney movement to show their support for the pop star. Dozens of #FreeBritney supporters were at the courthouse during Tuesday’s hearing, according to the Times.
In August, Jamie Spears called #FreeBritney “a joke” in an interview with Page Six.
“All these conspiracy theorists don’t know anything,” Spears told Page Six. “The world don’t have a clue. It’s up to the court of California to decide what’s best for my daughter. It’s no one else’s business.”