Britney Spears is now permitted to hire her own lawyer in her ongoing conservatorship legal battle, Judge Brenda Penny ruled at a court hearing in Los Angeles today (July 14). Former federal prosecutor Mathew Rosengart will take the place of Spears’ previous, court-appointed lawyer Samuel D. Ingham III, who filed to resign from his position last week, The New York Times reports. 

After Rosengart was approved as Spears’ new council, the singer read a written statement at the hearing, the Times points out. According to the Times, Spears grew emotional and was crying as she read the statement. She reportedly said that the conservatorship had ruined her life, at one point stating: “I’m here to get rid of my dad.” The Times’ report also states that Rosengart asked for James Spears to resign on the spot, but his lawyer declined, calling the request inappropriate.

A new report from Variety reveals additional details about Spears’ voluntary testimony earlier today. Spears reportedly told Judge Penny that she attended the hearing to charge her father with conservatorship abuse. “I want to press charges for abuse on this conservatorship today…all of it,” she said.

Variety also cites new allegations made by Spears during her remarks. She reportedly told Judge Penny that she was forced to take psych tests against her will during her “Circus” tour, and that she was forced to get her blood drawn multiple times per week. Spears reportedly stated that her conservators “lied” to her, saying that if she was evaluated, she could have her life back. “I did it all and they lied…they did nothing,” Spears said, adding that her episodes were a result of “what they did to me.” “It was their goal to make me feel crazy, which I’m not,” she reportedly stated.

During her testimony, Spears reportedly accused her father of taking away her driver’s license, forbidding her from drinking coffee, controlling what she ate, and not allowing her to take certain vitamins. “That’s not abuse. That’s just fucking cruelty,” she said, according to Variety’s report. She also mentioned that she would be left alone, unable to leave her house, despite being “vulnerable” and having “serious abandonment issues.”

The judge’s decision today follows a history of Spears not being granted the opportunity to appoint her own lawyer. In the early days of Britney Spears’ conservatorship in 2008, a lawyer appeared in court on behalf of the singer saying Spears has a “strong desire” that her father Jamie Spears not be a conservator. Conservatorship lawyers claimed that Spears “lacked the capacity” to hire two different lawyers she attempted to retain, Ronan Farrow and Jia Toletino’s New Yorker report noted. 

Ingham was appointed by Judge Reva Goetz, and Spears reportedly paid his annual salary of $520,000. In 2014, Ingham told the judge that Spears was unhappy with Jamie’s role as co-conservator and interested in retiring from performing, but “believed the conservatorship precluded that.” In 2020, he expressed support of the #FreeBritney movement and told the court that she “will not perform again if her father is in charge of her career.”

During a conservatorship hearing on June 23, Spears spoke at length, addressing the subject for the the first time in an incendiary statement. She categorized the conservatorship as abusive, and alleged that her father Jamie has been controlling her finances, working life, and her reproductive freedom for years. She said she wasn’t aware that she could petition to end the conservatorship and alluded to Ingham telling her to keep details about her life to herself. “I haven’t really had the opportunity by my own self to actually handpick my own lawyer by myself, and I would like to be able to do that,” she told the judge.

Following Spears’ court appearance, the singer’s longtime manager Larry Rudolph resigned, stating that Spears was interested in retiring, and he would therefore no longer be of service to her. Bessemer Trust, the wealth-management firm that was set to take over as the co-conservator of Spears’ estate, also requested to withdraw from the conservatorship. The judge accepted Bessemer Trust’s resignation today, potentially leaving Jamie Spears in place as sole conservator of Spears’ finances.

https://pitchfork.com/news/britney-spears-can-hire-her-own-lawyer-judge-rules-at-conservatorship-hearing