And what’s the likelihood that someone like your 50 would be brought in? If 99 out of 100 psychologists can and would give an unbiased and accurate evaluation, Britney has a MUCH higher than average chance of ending up with the 1 who could be bought off. Ordinarily I would find someone’s refusal to be evaulated somewhat fishy. In this particular case, it seems wise.
Also, it is important not to create a false dichotomy here. The options aren’t “conservatorship” or “nothing.” She may well need some level of support, but she’s clearly not so incapacitated that she should be stripped of her rights.
I am curious about what expenses has to pay for out of that $2000/week. That sounds outrageously low for someone in her position.
I couldn’t say who’d actually be hired. Presumably they’d need to be acceptable to the court and both parties. I merely suggest that an ethical evaluator would provide an ethical evaluation.
Any involuntary (e.g., court-ordered) psych examination can never be trusted to be ethical or bias-free, and it doesn’t appear here that the court is unbiased either. They have made up their minds that Britney isn’t competent, and their are no checks-and-balances to protect her against that.
Now it’s possible that may change now that she is allowed to hire a lawyer of her own choosing, if she manages to get a good one, AND if the court is at least somewhat honest.
(BTW – This isn’t a Catch-22. It’s exactly the opposite. In Catch-22, everybody was trying to prove they were insane, but by the very act of recognizing, or pretending to recognize, your own insanity it was taken as proof that you were sane.)
The issue here has been (but seems to be changing) that “both parties” are the same party. Her father has controlled the conservatorship - and she hasn’t been a party to any of the decisions made - from her attorney to her medical team to the people managing her finances. And the courts have - for thirteen years - been content with the conservators making the decisions.
It seems to be changing, but if Spears hasn’t suffered some gaslighting and ended up with severe trust issues from the conservatorship, it would be a miracle.
Essentially this man was arrested in 2017 by a Hawaii police officer who thought he was somebody else, and the more he insisted he was not the other guy the more they thought he was nuts. He was in a pych ward for over 2 years and medicated for his alleged delusions before somebody figured out he was right all along.
The guy they thought he was has been in prison in Alaska since 2016.
The AP version of the story with slightly more detail:
It’s too much coercive power. I don’t care whether you believe they provide miracle drugs or instead regard them as utter quacks, it’s the power to force treatment on people that constitutes a social problem.
Bloody hell. He even had ID and showed it to them.
“It was understandable that Mr. Spriestersbach was in an agitated state when he was being wrongfully incarcerated for Mr. Castleberry’s crime and despite his continual denial of being Mr. Castleberry and providing all of his relevant identification and places where he was located during Mr. Castleberry’s court appearances, no one would believe him or take any meaningful steps to verify his identity and determine that what Mr. Spriestersbach was telling the truth – he was not Mr. Castleberry.”
He did have genuine mental health problems and probably needed help for them, but I sincerely doubt they were actually treated while they were busy treating him as delusional about his own identity.
Poor man. His one piece of luck is having a supportive sister; hope she manages to get a big pay-out for him so that she can keep looking after him and get also him real treatment.
The Hawaii case, currently in the news, is also being discussed in the old newly-resurrected Rosenhan thread, which I think is the more relevant thread for it. It doesn’t really have much to do with Britney Spears.
I remember hearing a story years and years ago about a woman who was forced into a mental hospital because they thought she was speaking gibberish. She was there for a long time. Turned out she was speaking something like Hungarian.
I once read the chart of a person who was quoted as saying something similar to “My mother died! Anita told us that we should do. Anita is a real person!” While my interactions with the patient suggested that he was quite psychotic, I also flipped to the front of his chart and saw that Dr. Pseudonym was his PCP. I pointed out in a team meeting that just for the record, in case it made a difference, my friends Dr. Anita Pseudonym was indeed a real PCP in town and not a delusion.
“Tracy, who’s your doctor? Who gave you these pills?”
“Dr. Spaceman! Dr. Spaceman!”
(Cut to a doctor, answering a phone)
“Yes, this is Doctor Spa-SEE-man.”
-30 Rock
I’m puzzled by the significance of the claim many have made here that Spears’ conservators have a financial conflict of interest in keeping her under the conservatorship. That is presumably true, but it seems like something which is inherent in conservatorship, and would be equally true of any replacement conservator. I can’t imagine anyone is going to do it for free. (If you’re arguing against any conservator at all, that’s something else, but some have said that they have an issue with these particular conservators being well paid for their services, which is what I’m quibbling with.)
Also, it’s worth noting that some of the things Spears said in court have been disputed on factual grounds. If it should turn out that those counterclaims are correct, then her testimony is more evidence of her own delusional mental state more than of her victim status. Being that none of us casual media-consumers has a real basis for establishing the actual facts, it might be wise to be a bit more cautious about asserting that various people are being abusive.
All that said, my inclination is that the bar for placing people in conservatorships should be extremely high, and I incline to think she should be freed. My gut feeling is that she will then proceed to mess up her life, but that applies to a lot of people and I think people should generally have the right to do what they want even at cost to themselves.
Most conservatorships involve someone who is very close to death, or someone who is severely disabled. There generally are not millions in assets to be potentially siphoned off.