Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny, Spears went on to detail exactly how the conditions of her conservatorship are standing in the way of her modest goals, referring specifically to her desire to have her intrauterine device, or IUD, a form of long-term birth control, removed.
“I was told right now in the conservatorship, I’m not able to get married or have a baby,” Spears said on Wednesday.
The fact that Spears told the court she believes she’s not allowed to marry or remove her IUD raises serious questions about the advice she is receiving from her court-appointed lawyer, Samuel Ingham III, who was appointed to her case in 2008, shortly after her well-publicized mental breakdown.
Since that year, Spears has been living under a conservatorship, a legal arrangement designed to help elderly or disabled individuals manage their financial or personal matters when a court deems them unable to function on their own.
That Spears says she believes she can’t get married not only raises questions about the efficacy of her legal representation, it also casts a troubling light on the comments of at least one judge who has presided over the case.
Speaking about typical conservatorship arrangements, he tells Rolling Stone, “Unless you can prove that is literally incapable of communicating with or understanding her doctors, and she cannot support any rational thought about her medical care, she’s entitled to make her own medical care decisions, even if she’s in a conservatorship.” In Streisand’s opinion, Spears appears to meet those criteria just based on her statements in court this week.
“Her lawyer, who’s made millions of dollars from being Britney’s lawyer in conservatorship, who’s ethically required to file a petition to terminate her conservatorship at any moment that Britney says, ‘I want this over,’ and in 13 years he’s never done it.
Spears herself told the judge on Wednesday, “I haven’t really had the opportunity, by my own self, to actually handpick my own lawyer by myself.
Francis, the disability rights lawyer, likened Spears’ situation to the once-widespread practice of sterilizing mentally ill women.