Britney Spears' New Attorney & Conservatorship Issues Explained
[Source: Newstalk ZB/ CNN]
Top Family Law Attorney Christopher C. Melcher Discusses Britney Spears’ New Attorney & Her Conservatorship Issues
Interviewer: Good news for Britney Spears. An LA judge has ruled Brittany Spears can hire her own lawyer for her conservatorship case. Now the new lawyer is a fellow by the name of Mathew Rosengart, and he replaces the court-appointed lawyer that has been representing Spears since 2008. Nice work if you can get it. Outside court today, Mathew Rosengart, the new guy, promised that Britney’s father would be removed from the conservatorship.
Mathew Rosengart: The question remains, why is he involved? He should step down voluntarily as that is in the best interest of Britney Spears.
Interviewer: So to comment on this, I’m joined by an LA top family law attorney, Christopher Melcher of Walzer Melcher LLP, one of the best family law firms in California that handle several celebrity cases.
How big a deal is it, Britney getting to choose, not just to have a new lawyer, but a lawyer of her own choice?
“It’s an important first step in ending the conservatorship. This is something that she has a right to do. It’s her life, it’s her money that’s being spent on council. So it wasn’t an extravagant request to have someone chosen by her to advocate for her interests that’s free of the influence of the conservators,” explained celebrity divorce lawyer Christopher C. Melcher.
Interviewer: And considering she lost the first case, the fact that a judge has agreed that she can have a new lawyer and a second crack. That’s a good sign too.
“The case is unraveling before our eyes. It’s really in the last three weeks, since Britney spoke to the court and expressed that she wanted the conservatorship to be terminated and explain that it was abusive to her, that we are seeing finger-pointing between the conservators and attorneys. And that’s remarkable on a court case. So things are going to happen hopefully rapidly for her to bring this to an end, that’s been going on 13 years,” stated the international family law attorney.
Interviewer: The former lawyer was court-appointed. His name was Samuel Ingham. What was he like? Had he been there for a while? And were people seeing mistakes in any way, shape or form?
“Her court-appointed attorney had been there really since the beginning for 13 years. And he was getting a fee, I believe of $10,000 dollars a week to represent her. And he did file a petition to remove Jamie as the conservator in November of 2020 at Britney’s request. But he had also made statements in court that Britney was determined to be incapacitated by court order and that’s just simply not true.
This conservatorship started 13 years ago without any finding by a court that she was incapacitated. It’s what they’re calling a voluntary conservatorship that she allegedly submitted to all those years ago. And the fact that her court-appointed attorney didn’t even understand that history, which is a critical fact, that no one’s ever found that she’s been incapacitated was bothersome to me. That someone who had been on her case for that long, who’d made that much money wouldn’t even understand the factual history,” explained celebrity lawyer Christopher C. Melcher.
Interviewer: Okay. So as you say, it’s starting to unravel, there is a second attempt. So a lot of things have changed. So there could be a successful Britney in the future.
“Yes, there is intense pressure and focus on the case that’s not going to go away. We have the free Britney movement for years out in front of courts with rallies with the pink signs, on social media saying that this was an abuse of conservatorship, but nobody knew exactly what was going on until Britney spoke. And there were people who thought that the free Britney was a joke or that this was just a conspiracy that was made up.
