Britney Spears’ court-appointed attorney filed motions to resign from her conservatorship on Tuesday, the latest in a series of measures following the pop singer’s comments in court criticizing the legal arrangement that oversees her finances and affairs.
In filings filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Samuel Ingham III requested that the court appoint a new counsel for Spears and stated that his retirement would take effect as soon as that happened.
Spears was scathing of Ingham during her June 23 court testimony, in which she decried the conservatorship and requested Judge Brenda Penny to end it. She also said she wished the court would allow her to hire her own lawyer.
“I know I’ve grown a personal relationship with Sam, my lawyer. I’ve been talking to him like three times a week now. We’ve kind of built a relationship but I haven’t really had the opportunity by myself to actually handpick my own lawyer by myself — and I would like to be able to do that,” she told the court.
“I think this conservatorship is abusive. I don’t think I can live a full life,” she added. “I shouldn’t be in a conservatorship if I can work and provide money and work for myself and pay other people. It makes no sense.”
Bessemer Trust, the estate-management firm that Spears had asked to replace her father as her financial conservator, filed its own paperwork withdrawing from the case last week. According to the complaint, conditions had altered as a result of Spears’ comments in court on June 23.
Penny refused Spears’ plea to have her father completely replaced at a hearing in November, but ruled James Spears and Bessemer Trust may operate together as co-conservators of her funds.
In a letter obtained by entertainment industry newspaper Deadline on Monday, Britney Spears’ longtime manager Larry Rudolph resigned, stating that she had no plans to resume her career after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus, leaving him with no work to do for her.
Ingham, an experienced probate attorney, was mainly silent in the conservatorship for years, at least publicly, before becoming a more active champion for Britney Spears last year. His declarations in court that she feared her father and would not resume her profession as long as he had control over it were an early breach in the apparent consensus among the conservatorship’s participants.
Britney Spears had not requested Ingham to file a petition to remove the conservatorship, but he anticipated her to do so shortly, according to the June 23 hearing. Spears stated during the court that she didn’t realize she could file such a petition and that she still hasn’t.