In the name of Felicia Culotta, rejoice. On Thursday, a small but decisive fight was won in the long battle to #FreeBritney from her conservatorship. Variety reports that a probate judge overruled an objection from Jamie Spears, Britney’s father and conservator, establishing Bessemer Trust Co. as co-conservator of Britney Spears’s estate. In November, Judge Brenda Penny appointed Bessemer Trust as co-conservator of Spears estate after a proposal from Spears’s camp, while simultaneously denying Spears’ request to remove Jamie from the conservatorship entirely.
Viewers of the harrowing, chronological documentary Framing Britney know that Spears would very much like her father to be removed from the conservatorship, and her attorney, Samuel Ingham, reiterated this sentiment on Thursday. “It’s no secret that my client does not want her father as co-conservator, but we recognize that removal is a separate issue,†Ingham said. Regarding the proposal to establish Bessemer as a co-conservator with Jamie Spears, Ingham said in the hearing that he hoped to create “an equal division of responsibility, in the hopes that they would sit down and figure out together the best way to handle this complex estate for the benefit of my client.†Ingham also stated that he believed the next step in the process was for Bessemer and Jamie Spears to work out “a budget and an investment plan for Spears’ estate.â€
The hearing occurred just one week after the New York Times documentary aired on Hulu and FX and was attended by a few #FreeBritney activists who appeared outside the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles with posters of support for the pop star. The court is expected to hold more hearings on March 17 and April 27. So while Jamie Spears is still – in the wise words of Britney’s boyfriend Sam Asghari – a “total dick,†he’s a total dick that is no longer the sole conservator of Britney’s estate.