James, Britney Spears' father, misunderstood or victimizer?
In the midst of the controversy unleashed by the legal guardianship of Britney Spears and the role of her father in her life and career, the tangled and irreconcilable relationship between the two has been revealed.
James Parnell Spears, 69, caused great shock on August 12 when he announced that he is willing to renounce legal guardianship over his daughter, who since the 2000s has been called the Princess of Pop; although it must be said that she has had the life of the singer in recent times, except for the overtones of a fairy tale.
It was in 2007 when difficulties accumulated for Britney. Aside from the incisive harassment from the paparazzi and the press, rumors began about a mental imbalance; It is suspected that it could have occurred due to untreated postpartum depression, drug abuse and the legal fight for custody of her two children, Sean and Jayden Federline.
For the following year, this triggered a serious mental and emotional crisis in the singer of Oops! ... I Did It Again. At that time, a United States court determined that she should be under the surveillance and assistance of other people. Thus, the lawyer Andrew Wallet and James Spears, her father, asked for joint guardianship.
Later, Wallet resigned, and Spears became the sole guardian; But in 2019, she temporarily retired from her role due to health problems, which made Jodi Montgomery, a professional of this type of custody, become responsible for the singer's medical and personal well-being. In any case, James remains the sole custodian of Britney's fortune, manages her finances, and for this he receives a stipulated monthly payment of $ 16,000.
That is not the only thing he gets. He has profited from a percentage of the earnings from his daughter's musical work, including the albums Femme Fatale (2011) and Britney Jean (2013), by far the least successful of his discography, and the Piece of Me show, presented in Las Vegas, with which the collection of $ 500,000 is calculated for each performance performed between 2013 and 2017.
Today, 13 years after being under guardianship and 39 years old, the artist, who has sold millions of albums around the world, who in the past appeared in a presentation with a boa on her shoulders and even paralyzed the world by giving herself a kiss on the mouth with Madonna, he must still obey his father's decisions.
Now, he has been willing to give in, assuring that he "does not believe that a public battle with her daughter for her continued service as her guardian is the best for her." This was expressed by her lawyers, who expressed their intention to step aside.
But this has not been fortuitous, but the result of a year of legal attempts by the interpreter of hits like Toxic, that she wants to free herself from her. According to Britney, if she has been able to continue singing and performing in millionaire shows like the one in Las Vegas, she is able to make her own decisions. She is backed by a legion of loyal fans who have supported her since 2019 under the slogan and hashtag of social networks #FreeBritney, which has managed to unite several celebrities to her cause.
James has had the pop star's fortune for more than ten years. According to Forbes, he amounts to 60 million dollars, little if he compares with other artists of his genre, such as Katy Perry or Rihanna. In part, many believe that guardianship, a legal figure that in the United States is implemented on people unable to take charge of their lives, has been the cause of the decline in the artist's career, and she herself pointed out her father last year and assured that he would not stand on stage again while he was still in charge.
In official files that have been revealed from the legal process, it was found that Britney asked since 2014 that her father is no longer her guardian. She stated that she is afraid of him and that the guardianship has only led to abusive behavior from him. This is how it is known that she forbade him such mundane things as going on vacation, driving her own car and visiting her friends. This adds to her grave revelation about how lithium was supplied to control her mental and emotional state while she was forced to work. She “She worked seven days a week. It was like sex trafficking. She did not have a credit card, cash or passport, ”she said a couple of months ago at a hearing in Los Angeles, where she was alarmed by declaring that she had also been prevented from marrying and getting pregnant again.
On that same occasion in court, Britney questioned the suitability of her father as a guardian, highlighting his problems with alcohol and his difficult temperament, for which he has faced accusations of physical and verbal abuse in the past. Despite this, people close to the Spears family, as a source cited by The Telegraph, say that her father's decision to take over her daughter's life after the crisis was nothing more than a sincere attempt. for helping her.
"It was probably the right thing to do in that period because she was not having a good time ... but it has lasted too long," the newspaper recorded. This has caused the press of the show to inquire more about the past of the star's father, of whom very little was known until a few years ago, and of whom his legal representative, Vivian Lee Thoreen, has said in various media that he is "a fiercely loyal, loving and dedicated father who rescued his daughter from a life-threatening situation ”.
James Spears is originally from Kentwood, a small town in Louisiana, United States, where he grew up surviving one tragedy after another. It is known from his father that he was a strict and demanding man, and his mother committed suicide on the grave of another of his children when he was only 13 years old. At 17, James survived a car accident in which a friend was killed, and at 22 he was in trouble with the law for driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
He had a failed marriage to Debbie Sanders Cross, who, when asked by The New York Times about him, said: "I really think that is why he is trying to be protective of Britney," in reference to his tough personal past. .
He married for the second time in 1976 with Lynne, Britney's mother, who tried to separate from him at the age of four due to her violent attitude. Even so, they continued together until 2002, at which point Britney claimed that her divorce between her parents was the best thing that could happen to her family. In 2004, James went to rehab for his problems with alcohol due to the demand of his famous daughter. Four years after that, Lynne would speak a little more about the couple's relationship in her memoir, referring to the verbal abuse and abandonment that she suffered from her then husband.
Perhaps that is why, although they showed a united front in the worst moment of their famous daughter, there is still some quarrel between them, and James has pointed out his careless wife in front of what has happened during these years with the second of his three children, as Lynne has stayed out of all the legal mess since he applied to be Britney's guardian. Added to this record was that in 2019, due to an altercation with his grandson Sean, his father and Britney's ex-husband, Kevin Federline, filed a complaint against James with the Police and requested a restraining order, still in force, to that your ex-father-in-law cannot get close to your children.
It remains to be seen what else is uncovered in this family drama, in which power and money have played a definitive role. Not surprisingly, Mathew S. Rosengart, Britney's new lawyer, assured that she pursued a “vigorous investigation into the conduct of Mr. Spears and others, during the last 13 years, while he reaped millions of dollars from the inheritance of the daughter of he".
Rosengart hopes that Spears will have to testify in court and answer the probing questions that the artist's most loyal followers have been asking for years about what has really happened between them behind the scenes.
