Britney Spears’s father has hit back at attempts to remove him from the conservatorship that controls the singer’s money and affairs, saying there are ‘no grounds whatsoever’ to do so and describing the singer as ‘mentally sick’.
Jamie Spears claimed in a court filing that Britney is struggling so much with her mental health that court-appointed professional Jodi Montgomery, who overseas the popstar’s life decisions, recommended hospitalizing her on emergency psychiatric hold.
In court documents filed in Los Angeles on Friday, Spears said Montgomery had called him, distraught, last month and sought his help with his daughter’s mental health struggles. He claimed that Montgomery had explained that Britney was not taking her medications properly and refused to see some of her doctors and that she was ‘spiralling out of control’.
But Montgomery and her lawyer said in response that Spears ‘misrepresented and manipulated’ the call to use it to his own advantage’. The court filings come as Britney’s former bodyguard claimed she is living ‘like an inmate in a golden prison’ as the singer has her phone calls monitored and is not allowed out unsupervised.
The filing by Spears was in response to court papers filed a day earlier by Britney’s new attorney Matthew Rosengart, which requested an emergency hearing as soon as possible to suspend him from the conservatorship.
A hearing to address Rosengart’s petition to remove James Spears is scheduled for 29 September, unless the judge grants his request to hold one sooner. Britney Spears has been under the conservatorship since 2008, when concerns over her mental health prompted her father to petition the court for legal authority over his daughter’s life.
