By Rex Weiner -December 19, 2019 Los Angeles Magazine

Shortly after noon on a sunny day last May, reporters staking out the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s Stanley Mosk Courthouse downtown spotted Britney Spears hand in hand with her mother, Lynne, sneaking through a side door and taking pains to avoid the earnest crowd of devoted fans parading outside with #FreeBritney signs.

It was a rare appearance by the Princess of Pop, whose court-appointed attorney, Samuel Ingham III, usually represented her alone in these proceedings. Each year, rules of the probate court require a review of the status of the legally mandated conservatorship headed by her father, Jamie, compelling the parties involved to justify continuing the arrangement that for more than a decade has controlled every aspect of Britney’s business and personal life since her well-documented and very public breakdown in 2008.

For months rumors had been swirling in the press and on Britney fan sites that the 38-year-old mother of two was chafing under the conservatorship, and this bright spring day might see her liberated from its restrictions. After all, hadn’t the gossip website TMZ
reported that Lynne was going to ask the court to relieve her ex-husband Jamie from his role as their daughter’s conservator? For the #Free-Britney movement—a feisty, contentious, and often daffy online community obsessed with releasing the singer from the constraints of her father’s oversight—it seemed the moment of truth was at hand.

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