Reply to Framing Britney Spears

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[quote=Anonymous]People Magazine had a roundtable of people discussing the hearing and the consensus seems to be that the conservatorship was unusually strict for someone functioning at her level and also someone so young.
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https://people.com/music/britney-spears-conservatorship-termination-experts-weigh-in/
How common is court-mandated birth control and psychiatric medication for people under conservatorships?

Harry Nelson: It's fairly unusual. You tend to see it in cases where you're dealing with adults with a significant cognitive deficit or with some kind of severe mental health issue where they are at potential risk of self-harm or harm to others. So it's pretty rare and pretty narrow set of conditions. My view is that it's absolutely shocking that this is still in place for somebody like Britney Spears.

Esquibias: Typically, a conservator doesn't have the right to force psychotropic drugs or secured perimeter facilities - facilities with locked doors where they can't walk in or out. It requires special sign-off from the judge, and is sometimes used for dementia patients or in some cases people with severe mental illness. As invasive as it sounds, a conservatee can be told you have to be on birth control. The idea is to protect the conservatee because the conservatee is unable to care for herself while pregnant or during childbirth.

Britney said multiple times she wants the conservatorship to end without an external evaluation. Can that happen? What next steps can she take and how long would the process take?

Esquibias: A judge is obligated to take in all the evidence, and in a conservatorship setting the evidence typically includes the confidential written report of the probate investigator who is usually a licensed social worker who interviews the conservatee and all family members to the second degree. Based on those interviews, the investigator comes to a conclusion and writes a recommendation to the judge. The judge takes in that piece of evidence and listens to the testimony of the conservator, the conservatee and to any relative to the second degree, and frankly, anyone else the judge wants to listen to. After taking in all the evidence, the judge is equipped to make a decision. That's why it would be very unlikely to render a decision without the opinion of a medical expert.

Nelson: The judge has the discretion to say they want the evaluation. In a normal situation, that would be an appropriate step to take. I just think this case is a black eye on the conservatorship system in California, and the fact that Britney has been subjected to this is scary. You think about somebody that has her fame and power in public, and she's been subjected to this. I think it undermines the credibility of our system. It's almost a monstrous kind of circumstance that this has been allowed to stand.

A judge is going to have to decide whether they're going to want an independent review or evaluation. I would think if she is able to demonstrate - even though it is common to rely on outside sources, judges generally don't like to be in the position of making direct evaluations and are often deferring to outside evaluators - I think there is enough evidence here for a judge to forego that evaluation. The judge may want another evaluation, but I would not be surprised if the judge forego it altogether based on the evidence that she is not somebody that needs to be under these severe controls.

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