Britney Spears and her estranged father have reached a settlement in their ongoing legal dispute, in which she ended up paying over $2 million in legal bills for her dad while receiving nothing in return.
This settlement comes more than two years after a judge dissolved the conservatorship that had granted him control over the American pop star’s affairs.
The specifics of the agreement between the “Womanizer” hitmaker and Jamie Spears have not been made public, according to statements released by their lawyers to the press on Friday.
Matthew Rosengart, Spears’ lawyer, stated that the settlement has provided his client with the “freedom” she had been seeking. “She will no longer have to participate in court proceedings or deal with legal entanglements in this matter,” he elaborated.
Meanwhile, Alex Weingarter, Jamie Spears’ lawyer, said that his client was “thrilled that this is all over.”
The entertainment news outlet TMZ reported from sources directly knowledgeable about the settlement that it involved the 42-year-old singer paying Jamie Spears’ legal expenses, totaling over $2 million.
This payment is on top of several million dollars she had previously spent on her own legal fees, as per the same sources, who mentioned that Spears was “furious” about the financial burden.
Spears was under a conservatorship for nearly 14 years before it was terminated by a Los Angeles court in November 2021.
In her book, “The Woman in Me,” Spears details how the conservatorship controlled almost every aspect of her life, from dietary choices and artistry decisions to family planning. She even mentioned restrictions like not being allowed to drive or consume coffee.
“I begged the court to appoint literally anyone else—and I mean anyone off the street would have been better—for the job of conservator,” Spears wrote in her memoir, as CBS News and other outlets have noted. “However, my father was given the job.”
In her memoir, Spears also described how “the conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood and made me into a child.”
“I became more of an entity than a person onstage,” said Spears, who was born in Mississippi and raised in Louisiana. “I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
Despite the termination of the conservatorship, legal disputes lingered over attorney fees and Britney Spears’ accusations that Jamie Spears had abused his position for personal gain, which he denied.
Weingarten asserted that his client only ever “wanted the best for Britney—nothing less.”
The settlement announced on Friday prevents a trial that would have revisited the details of the conservatorship extensively, pitting father and daughter against each other in a very public forum.
