Britney Spears
Valerie Macon | AFP | Getty Images
Two Republican lawmakers requested a hearing to examine legal guardianship, citing pop star Britney Spears’ widely publicized deal involving her father as the conservator of her property.
House Judiciary Committee member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Representative Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, asked President Jerrold Nadler, DN.Y., to schedule a hearing to examine potentially unfair conservatories in a letter. dated Monday and published Twitter Tuesday.
Spears’ tutelage has gained attention in recent weeks after the New York Times aired a documentary, “Framing Britney Spears”, about the so-called Britney Free movement. Activists involved in the movement say Spears is being held unfairly in guardianship by his father, who is able to control his finances. Although Spears rarely comments on the guardianship, recent lawsuits have shown that she has asked that her father be removed as the only conservative.
Guardianships are used to allocate financial or personal decisions to another person, in the event that an individual is unable to make them on his own. Spears’ guardianship is unusual for how young she was when it was imposed and how long it lasted. Guardianships are most commonly used in cases of mental disability or dementia that prevent a person from making their own sensible decisions.
Spears was almost 20 years old when a court approved his guardianship in 2008. This happened after a series of high-profile incidents that led the public to question the state of his mental health, and periods in rehabilitation and a psychiatric hospital.
“Given the constitutional freedoms at stake and the opacity of these arrangements, it is up to our Committee to convene a hearing to examine whether Americans are unjustly imprisoned in custody,” wrote Jordan and Gaetz.
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