Stuff You Should Know - Conservatorships: #freebritney

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

Britney Spears has made a lot of noise lately in her bid to nullify her conservatorship. But what are they even? Listen in to find out! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life

Tell everybody yeah, everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Welcome to stuff you should know a production of I heart radio Hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh Clark There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's guest producer who's actually a real producer to Dave Houston so guest producer in your mind means

ghost producer No, I don't think he's dead. Are you dead Dave? Well, not a real producer. I don't know what's going on here So he is the producer of short stuff, which is technically a spin-off of stuff you should know But he's here sitting in for Jerry on stuff you should know which would make him a guest in this particular context, okay? But enough about that. I was just saying all that to welcome everybody now. It's ruined forever Sorry instead Chuck. I think that we should talk about Conservatorships and before you say anything. Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Are you saying inhale? Yeah, I understand I think everybody who didn't realize what episode they were listening to just inhaled to

I searched high and low for something to Relate this to in the real world. It could find like nothing So this is probably gonna be a fairly boring dry episode on, you know Legalities and the legal system with no no application to to real life and certainly no application to pop culture whatsoever, so buckle up everybody. I guess I'm trying to say Oops, you did it again. Oh, I happen to be wearing a Catholic schoolgirl skirt right now, too Yeah, so this obviously came to me because of the Britney Spears situation. I Don't know a lot about Britney Spears and didn't know a lot about her situation other than

loosely hearing about it in the news, but the more I poked around the more I was like man, this really this really smacks of Sort of the old days, you know, like your honor my wife or my daughter is crazy And we need to do something about this and I use that terminology because that's that's kind of how it used to go back In the day and sadly that kind of stuff still happens, right through things like conservatorships And so it turns out that it's a pretty straightforward thing, but in her case

The waters are pretty muddy Yeah, well, she's a really rare case The only other person I can think of that even comes close to fitting the bill for this very rare type of Conservatorship that Britney Spears has is Amanda Bynes who is another child star who kind of publicly Melted down I guess you could put it and whose mother got her into conservatorship, which I think she's still under today And bristles under it publicly, too So most of the time when you're talking about conservatorships, which is basically one person Legally having the ability and authority to make decisions on behalf of somebody else

Mm-hmm. You're talking about somebody who has gone into a coma somebody who has had Cognitive difficulties maybe for life Somebody just suffering from Alzheimer's or something like that something like that much much more more often than not It's something that's part of elder law a conservatorship it so it's really we it's rare weird You can just say weird. It's very weird that Britney Spears very healthy with it active Like I think she's like 30 something's early 30s right now

No late 30s. I think she's 39 She that that she would be in a conservatorship, but she has she has been since she was 26 and It may maybe she's coming out of it No one can say for sure that it's kind of looked like well, of course They're gonna let her out of it multiple times in the past, but it seems like from what I understand now She might actually finally get out from under this conservatorship at this point. Who knows? Yeah, so just a little quick background if you didn't know and not to get to in the weeds But in 2008 Britney Spears had

What people have described online as a kind of a public meltdown Her her family was worried about her She was hospitalized for mental health issues twice Twice a couple of times she famously shaved her head and was very aggressive with the paparazzi and you know It's very easy for some people I guess in her family to say Hey, she has some mental issues. She needs some help Let me step in and establish a conservatorship, but it's also easy as an outsider to look back now and say Hey, she went through some stuff

The paparazzi is awful and terrible and what might you do in that situation and Maybe she just needed a little assistance to get through a particular time in her life And here we are in 2021 all these years later and she still has her father basically in charge of the decisions of her life financially and with her health and And in certain cases her career and she's she's trying to get him out of there First and foremost as her conservator and also trying to get the conservatorship itself dissolved Yeah, because I think one of the things that makes her case so gut-wrenching is that Basically her worst enemy her father was put in charge of her life

Against her will and she's lived like that for 13 years So, I mean we'll like we'll talk about how her case applies, you know Throughout the episode for sure, but just to kind of like lay down the the the groundwork for what a conservatorship is There apparently there's not one set legal definition like you could very easily just basically say it's where somebody's Legally in charge of somebody else's decisions Some states call it guardianship other states call it conservatorship But the whole point of it is that somebody has been deemed Unable to make good decisions for themselves to sometimes physically take care of themselves or

Maybe even both and so the court has been petitioned to Kind of give someone else the ability to make those decisions to take care of that person and the the point of it if you really if you take away the whole Britney Spears thing and any kind of Skechiness that can kind of pervade this whole kind of this this this legal weirdness It's kind of an act of love to step in and say this person is in really Bad dire straits right now, and I will help them while they're going through this or possibly for the rest of their lives I'm willing to take care of their needs and see to it that they're taking care of that's what it's supposed to be about it at base Sure, and ideally that's how it goes down

There is not a lot of data about conservatorships and how often they are petitioned to get Uninstated I think it's removed Uninstated I like it too. It's great great word now. Okay. I just made up a new word every you could win boggle with that Chuck And we'll get to the you know why that is a little bit later, but When you petition a court what happens is there is an evaluation that the court orders of this Person who is known as a conservative and the person in charge as the conservator

Mm-hmm, and there's an attorney appointed to represent them And they hold a hearing and they decide whether or not this is something that they should move forward with there's an evaluation done The person is allowed to speak on their behalf at this time It's not the kind of thing where you can Just be railroaded and I'm not exactly sure The details of Britney Spears when that when it first happened as far as if she was like Yeah, this is for the best right now or if she fought it in the beginning. No, I think she was You're saying no, no to which one to the first that or that she was she was in favor of I'll tell you in a second

All right, well go ahead. You want me to tell you now? We have to wait a second any longer Okay, I'll fill you in Chuck get that. I want some of the documentary, but I had other things to do I saw the documentary too was Surprisingly ho hum and totally one-sided. I thought it was really kind of gross in a lot of ways But interesting for sure, but I also read a I read a really good New Yorker article recent one from July 3rd I think called Britney Spears conservative conservatorship nightmare by Ronan Farrow and Gia Tolentino to

And it is just a moment by moment breakdown on well Britney's breakdown and then also like How she ended up in it and from this and other sources. I saw that basically she was not informed that she was being placed into conservatorship beforehand which from what I can tell is a Gross violation of her rights in that sense and that she didn't have a chance to petition the court to basically say no And then by the time she found out about it and tried to petition it She was told that she was not in any kind of mental state to hire her own counsel And so she had counsel appointed to her so she never had an evaluation From so the judge in this case is now retired and she said that that is not true

Of course, she was evaluated and I talked to her and all that stuff But the the the way that this is described is it was a ten-minute thing and it was they went in and as far like on the surface The the her parents went in and petitioned the judge in ten minutes later the judge granted full I guess temporary conservatorship Without any any other formalities. That's how it that's how it is You know on its face and then the judge is denying that there was any back room Deals or anything made beforehand so it doesn't really make sense and it kind of stinks to high heaven in that respect Yeah, what did she think was going on then who Brittany? Yeah

When she was evaluated That's the thing. I don't know that she was evaluated. She had just undergone two fifty one fifties where the The the basically the states of Van Halen's to not just one to she had a fifty one fifty in an OU 812 Oh, man, she she know so the fifty one fifties where somebody can basically say this person is is Is mentally unstable right now? They may be a harm to themselves or others and the the fire department comes and gets you and takes you off to a hospital For you're kept against your will for 24 48 72 hours that happened to her twice and upon the second one her parents went and petitioned the court to

To grant them conservatorship and the court did I don't know anything about a an evaluation that actually took place as part of the Conservatorship I get the impression that was like oh, she said two fifty one fifties. That's enough for me Interesting by the way, we can't say that without shouting out listener Aaron Hagar. Oh, yeah, that's right Rock on. We have to yeah totally All right, so there are some different types of conservatorships One is financial and they often work hand-in-hand and sometimes kind of have to Financial obviously is when you are in charge of someone's finances The conservatee themselves have autonomy, but they don't have financial autonomy

They can't you know go out and buy a house or rent a house or make any big purchases Or maybe even any kind of purchases without the conservator sort of being there along the way saying it's fine Yeah, and I think they also have like they generally have spending money. They're given an allowance, right? So they'll have that at least but yeah for the big purchases. No way physical is when their health and Basically medical decisions their health and their life kind of everything is controlled by the conservator I know I'm gonna mess it up at some point Whether or not they want to go to a therapist or whether or not they want to have certain medications

supposedly they you know, you can't make someone take medication Legally, but it again especially in her case it gets very murky with some of the charges She's levied against her father as far as that stuff goes. Yeah Yeah, and I mean on that in particular what I saw was that though the carrot in the stick that her father uses against her is Visitation rights. Yeah her to see her kids brutal That was definitely one thing that came through and a lot of stuff I've been reading is that like she is super dedicated to her kids and they've been just kept from her for you know They're basically their whole lives and that that was ultimately what really led to her meltdown

You know the popper I didn't help and you know just being a star The divorce all of that stuff did not help But that all it was you know It's her kids that is really like that the dagger that just gets turned in her chest every time like she she had to like leave or They had to leave And that her father dangles that over her like if you don't do this if you don't sign this contract and do these performances You know, I can't let you see the kids or whatever. So right that's apparently that's he gets a cut He does he gets 1.5% of all new deals, too

Yeah, and she's made a lot of money in the past, you know years that she's been Locked down right had a very successful Vegas run. She had a couple of big albums She's been guest judges on a couple of the big competition shows So she's not she's out there earning a lot of money still right for her and pops. Yeah There's general conservatorships and that is when it's it's kind of everything and these are more common It's kind of rare. It seems like for there to be Only a physical conservatorship without being a financial Because those things are probably kind of go hand-in-hand

So general is all-encompassing and then you have your limited conservatorship where it's Usually this is a case where it may be like Let's say an adult that's disabled in some way that still wants to have and can have Autonomy physical autonomy and maybe hold down a job and have their own apartment But there's just certain parts of their life that a conservator will handle right so The everything I saw is that limited is what you're ultimately going for when you're establishing a conservatorship You want to you want to minimize the number of restrictions necessary to help the person through their life

While maximizing their individual liberties. Yes, so so when it goes down like it should yeah And it's not supposed to be a one-size-fits-all like boom. This person has all control over them It's like how much do you need? How much how much do they need to give up? That's supposed to be the goal of a conservatorship hearing Yeah, and then you've got sometimes their They're Categorized by their length you can have short term temporary or permanent with short term Usually it's not more than a few months than 90 days and it's because of some thing that happened. It's an immediate need

These can sometimes go down without that formal hearing that we were talking about Because it is short term and and you know capped off at a certain point That is different than temporary though temporary can Turn into permanent. Yeah, whereas I don't think short term can yeah I think temporary is where they're like, okay This person may get better at some point, but we have no idea when but when they do get better They're gonna want to have their life back. So let's just make this temporary short term is where I saw I saw that

It's frequently used for when somebody is going into like drug rehab or something like that And they have like a lot of plates in the air or a lot of finances Although one of the things that I saw is that finances are not supposed to be a Reason for conservatorship, right? It's like to help. I'm afraid they'll spend all their money Yes, that's supposed to not be a justification for conservatorship and the problem that I have From the outside with Britney Spears conservatorship is that it seems to be a hundred percent predicated on that and it seems that way That it's almost like the this poor this poor person her brand grew bigger than her and so to protect the brand from potentially her, you know

Spending it into the ground or whatever. Yeah, they placed her in Conservatorship so that she can't she can't make decisions about her own brand and then that's being kind of reflected on her own life So she's being held hostage against well and also being forced to perform. It's one of the most bizarre things I think that's ever happened in the legal system. It's been especially it's nuts that it's been ongoing for so long too and so public Yeah, it's very interesting case All right, let's take a break. Yay. Yay All right, no nays Dave's not saying no. No, what if they've just piped in I was like, uh-huh. No, keep going keep going I'm the conservator here

We'll be back right after this Oh, hey everybody when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her Cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh god

Seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you Oh, man, and so my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life step by step Oh, not another one. Mm-hmm kids relationships life in general can get messy You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so tell everybody yeah, everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts If you want to know then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck

Stuff you should So Chuck um, there was one other type of conservatorship by duration that we didn't mention that is apparently pretty tick typical, which is permanent. Oh Yeah, I mentioned that I guess I thought it was self-explanatory No permanent Go on. Well, it's permanent in Spirit, but you can as we're seeing now file to have it removed or on I don't even know that word I coined earlier Un reinstated

Well, I'm sorry re-uninstated. Yeah, I don't know either. So non-instated See the whole point of coining new words is you got to be able to use them at the you know drop of a hat Yeah, but I mean you got to take some practice. You know what I'm saying? I know so the reason permanent though is So typical and as far as conservatorships goes because most of the time when you end up in conservatorship. It's because You you suffered some sort of very debilitating Problem or you've had it your whole life like it's just it's it's a long-term issue that you're dealing with so you're this is a long-term solution a permanent conservatorship

Right and that really ties hand-in-hand with kind of the next part about how to get one It is usually almost always because of some sort of mental incapacity of some form whether that's Temporary or like you said earlier for a temporary like, you know Someone's in an accident and they're in a coma But they come out of the coma in two weeks and then you know work their way back to good health again And they wake up and they're like Ricky Lake. We're engaged now Really pulled that one out of some. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you

Thank you You know we mentioned stuff like dementia and Alzheimer's that is a very very common case for conservatorships or if you have like you said from birth if you have some sort of Permanent disability No matter how that came about then that's you know, oftentimes like Parents or some other family member just from the time you're a kid have that conservatorship Yeah, and basically there's like a two-pronged test to applying a conservative conservatorship I'm gonna say it correctly the first time one of these one of these times in this episode. I promise you can't even say conservative

No That was great Chuck So is the person unable to basically meet their own? Basic needs like care for themselves feed themselves that kind of stuff in which case there would be a Conservatorship of the person where you can make like medical decisions for them, right? Be living arrangements like decide if they're gonna live in a long-term care facility something like that or and or Can they make decisions for themselves which are

Sound financially like can they understand the contract that they're signing? Can they understand that if they you know by this house that they have to pay this amount of money or something like? And if they can't do either or both of those things then a conservatorship might be just the thing to kind of help them Make it through life, especially again if they have Substantial wealth or if they are just totally unable to care for themselves Yeah, and you know the the way this goes down ideally and I think more typically than what we're seeing in Britney Spears case is You know medical records are presented. They're the probate or family court is handling this the conservative tea is

either Understands and goes along with it because they know it's for their own good or Isn't you know is clearly not capable which is why they need the conservator to begin with Mm-hmm of making these decisions and again, it's just super rare for this kind of case Where someone is having something done Seemingly against their will kind of from the get-go. Yeah, I mean like for the most for the most part if you're in a conservatorship Like you might not even be conscious. You might have no idea that you're under conservatorship Sure, you might not be able to work or hold down a job or remember to feed yourself

You're certainly not going on world tour and releasing four albums to which go platinum and then Maintaining a Vegas residency and generating a hundred and thirty million dollars in income over, you know ten thirteen years something Yeah, it just makes it's just so bizarre. It's so bizarre and I have to say also one other thing I don't want to give the impression that I'm just like a like a hashtag free Britney person like I understand that those people have Just the best intentions and my hat is off to them But I also think it's very very wise to remember like we're seeing all this from the outside Most of the court documents involved are sealed and so there's a lot of like tea leaf reading and trying to figure out what's really going on here and

It's entirely possible that that this conservatorship has kind of helped Britney like the people who defend who have been involved and Defend it say, you know She had a couple million dollars left some of the worst people in the world surrounding her Her money was going fast. Her brand was starting to go and now she's worth like 60 to 80 million dollars She's back on top. She doesn't have a bunch of scummy people hanging around her And then the scummy people are like no these people came in and wrestled control of Britney's own life and now they're in charge of her And they're they're bilking her for money So it's it's really impossible to tell who to trust at this point in time

So I think it's it's wise to at least keep something of an open mind even if it seems totally on the surface like This this pop star is being held prisoner in public, you know, well when you need those tealies read, you know, you get Hold on. I don't know you get Ronan Farrow That's right Frank Sinatra, Jr. That's right. No, he's junior junior, right? Oh Well, I mean, I mean he's supposedly Woody Allen son, but That's right, I mean, I'm not the first person. I mean, that's it's a it's a big thing online like yeah, yeah, sure That's Frank's kid. Sure, but who knows supposedly not I don't know, okay

But we're just we're just hitting the celebrity beat all over the place Do you remember kids beat on Nickelodeon? Yeah, see you next time That popped into my head the other day out of nowhere, and I was like did I just make that up that was a thing though Yeah, I don't remember anything but that catchphrase that sign here Nothing else. Maybe we had a group hallucination. It's possible like the barren stain bears Oh, yeah, that's right. What's that called? Mandela fact. Yeah. All right, so In her case in California in this house to forks article that we got a lot of this from highlights this

It is different in every state with with a lot of legalities like this So it will differ depending on where you are But in California, they have something called the Judicial Council of California's handbook for conservators where it does lay out about a dozen rites of someone like Britney Spears Which one of which is they can directly receive their salary. So supposedly she Like it's not like the checks get written to Jamie Spears and he doles it out Supposedly by law. She is receiving her salary still. Oh, that's not at all what I heard. Oh, really? She has her living expenses met and they total about

$425,000 a year So she has everything she wants, but she doesn't pay for anything herself. She says I need this That doesn't mean that the check isn't made out in her name. Oh, no, no, no, no, absolutely You're right. You're right, but the whole the whole her dad doling it out. That's it. That's a hundred percent true Yeah, yeah, what I'm just saying is like the check doesn't come. I got a name. Yeah, no, it's all it's all in her name still right The right to receive calls and mail and see people You can change your will

Legally you can get married. You can hire your own lawyer Which was has been a big bone of contention with the Britney Spears case because she had this court-appointed lawyer for Many many years until very recently when she was finally like can I at least hire my own person? And they did allow that the whole free Britney crew has basically been like that that lawyer is chummy with her dad Right. He's working for her dad rather than her, you know So yeah, it may have been that's why at the beginning I was saying like she might finally be getting out from under this Conservatorship because she has a new lawyer of her own choosing. There's a new sheriff in town. There is and everybody's running for the hills What we're seeing play out now are another couple of things on the list the request

To either change conservators or end the conservatorship. They are allowed to vote They're allowed to control their own Allowance, but it doesn't you know that very clearly doesn't mean they're allowed to establish their own allowance Yeah, or what the amount is or anything? Yeah their medical decisions and business transactions are should be under their control and Was there one more? So basically anything you're allowed to do at the at the beginning of it. Oh, right conservatorship. You should be able to throughout

There were a couple of things in there that that and that was I think California's rights, right? Yeah So this is a California case. She's in there a California conservatorship. So all of those should very much apply to her But she's said recently that like her father won't let her get married. He decides who she can date or not date Yeah, and again, I don't think that's that's legal, but I think he can threaten like sure Uh, uh, not just visitation like restraining orders he can take out restraining orders in her name against two mother he he deems Like inappropriate and I guess can demonstrate to the court that this person might be a bad influence on her

And that that's probably how he has has been able to decide who she dates or doesn't date because she wants to marry a dude Right now. She says and have more kids and the other big the really truly shocking revelation that she She revealed recently is that she has an IUD that her father won't let her remove Yeah, she can't have kids so her reproductive rights are being infringed upon under this conservatorship and that is a very big deal Yeah, and again, this is the kind of stuff where There's there's two two sides talking and we don't know the real truth on the inside But at the very least like when an accusation like that big is levied You have to as a I would think is the court have to look into that kind of thing

Yeah, and there there have been court-appointed investigators before and one of them I read concluded like she should probably not be under this conservatorship anymore It wasn't like, you know, they joined the free britney crowd or anything like that, but like that was their report and their recommendation But it's like you're saying, you know, we're seeing this from the outside so Like the the people who who are on the inside in this conservatorship point out like, you know, she wasn't worth very much Then and she's now so she's kind of thriving under this arrangement, which is apparently a way that A conservatorship somebody could end up in a conservatorship for the rest of their life Right thriving under the conservatorship and then conversely if you struggle under the conservatorship and have a really hard time That can be used as evidence that you need to be under the conservatorship as well

So you kind of get this impression that it's like If you're if you're like a with it person able to make your own decisions and you find yourself in a conservatorship You probably feel like you're just totally out of your mind and just can't believe this is happening to you It sounds nightmare right if if if it's like as bad as from what britney's saying it is, you know Well, yeah, and I'm sure she's in a case where she's trying to establish something a little more nuanced like emotional well-being rather than Like someone can a judge can say look at all this money you've made since this has happened and right You know, it's there's a lot more to it than that though. It's to be a whole human Well, that's another thing too though. So the original co-conservator along with jamie spears britney's father

Was a guy named andrew wallett and he was court appointed a terrible name for a conservator Terrible like he should have just been like I can't be a conservator because of my last name But he was andrew cod and he was for many many many years actually and actually was under under his conservatorship or co-conservatorship that she kind of like came back and started working again and um started making money again And I guess kind of thrived at least as a business Um, and he was basically run out of the conservatorship on a rail because he asked for a salary toward the end of

$426,000 a year Which is a lot of money The thing is his point was like look if you're a conservator basically Under normal circumstances, you're just kind of keeping up with somebody's quiet life one One one every day person and their quiet life and their little finances and making sure they're taken care of As as conservator britney spears estate. He was like running basically a international A business that had all these fingers and all these pots and he said most people who are in that position make

Millions of dollars a year. I'm asking for 426,000 So like that to me was a real reminder like oh, yeah, there's actually two sides of this coin Like this is an unusual situation for anybody Um, and it it kind of makes sense in in that respect Although if you look at the normal amount that a conservator would would charge for their time Um, he was asking for a lot actually Yeah, and that's a good point as far as your obligation as conservator you uh

And again put britney spears aside for a second and these ideal situations They are genuinely taking care of these people meeting their daily needs and necessities Making sure all their bills are paid and their checkbook is balanced and you know, they don't Go in the whole financially The big hooking point here though is is that if you're a financial conservator You are not supposed to be Using that person's money for your own benefit. Yeah, like you said you are allowed to take a A salary and it says in this article somewhere between 40 and a hundred dollars per hour

Which means jamie spears Uh is taking a hundred dollars per hour at 40 hours a week because He's getting sixteen thousand dollars a month And that's that's what it comes to like the the basically the top rate at 40 hours per week Right, which when you look at that, I mean if that he like you said though, he also gets a cut of her stuff Um to play devil's advocate. He is Taking a salary commiserate with what a conservator

Historically can take Yeah, so the andrew wallet if you look at it from the from the perspective Well, he's a conservator and not actually like running the business then he yeah He'd have to work more than 80 hours a week 50 weeks a year at a hundred dollars an hour But again, his point was this isn't a normal conservatorship. This is running the britney spears In multinational enterprise for her benefit, you know Yeah, and if you're the conservator you also, you know You're gonna at some point probably have to answer to the court, especially in some case like this

So you got to have all your ducks in a row. You've got to keep receipts and you've got to have A paper trail to kind of back up everything you can't just waltz in there and say like trust me everything's going fine Um supposedly you're gonna have to have pretty robust records For kind of every financial decision you're making on behalf of your Conservatee, so that's ideally Um now we reach the the reality and that's this is one good thing of britney spears Uh conservatorship and all the the light she's shining on conservatorship abuse right now Is like this is an issue in normal like non-celebrity society

Where people can get preyed upon by basically a professional conservator Um and there was a general accounting office report that basically said The states have no idea how many people how many of its citizens or residents are under conservatorship right now How much money is being held in conservatorship right now? They might have a good idea in some cases in other cases. They have no idea and as part of the report the gao basically made up Identities in like four different states around the country and applied for conservatorship And they were granted in all four cases or all four states

Conservatorship to be to go out and be A conservator to a stranger and take control of some strangers finances as part of like as their career And the states didn't check their background didn't run their social security numbers didn't do a credit check didn't do anything They just basically rubber stamped it like this person wants to be a conservator. There you go You're a state licensed conservator now who can go take control of the finances of someone Who's never even met you before and like in that respect. This is ripe for abuse This is the kind of situation where a judge is morally obligated to Give as much attention

to to each case As needed to make sure a hundred and ten percent sure that the person under conservatorship is not being exploited Is not being taken advantage of financially is not Being kept. Uh, I think they call it isolated medicated and liquidated Um and and kept away from their family and their loved ones It can be a nightmare Unless the court is overseeing this properly and apparently in all cases they don't which is

Just unconscionable and judges who dropped the ball on that should be run out of town Right into jail themselves All right, well, let's take a break Thanks, thanks for backing me up on that one And uh, we'll be back right after this to talk about where how you can end these things And some legislation that might could help as well right after this Hey friends when you're staying at an airbnb You might be like me wondering could my place be an airbnb and if it could what could it earn?

So I was pretty surprised to hear about lisa in manitoba who got the idea to airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at airbnb dot ca slash host if you want to know then you're in luck All right, so I mentioned before we get into how you can terminate this uh, this sort of dovetails what with your Uh, with your great soapbox moment right before the break if I may say yeah, I remember Uh, there is legislation as of um, about an hour and a half ago. I read this on new york times Wait a minute. It was published an hour and a half or you just read it an hour and a half again It was published an hour and a half. Wow. That is late breaking

First up, you should know this is super late breaking. Uh, two members of the house Uh, cosponsored and you know, when you see these bills cosponsored on both sides of the aisles for these kind of smaller bills That's when you know that government can work. Was it was it senator lance bass and senator joey fatone? That's good. Thank you cosponsors rep charlie christ a democrat of florida and nancy mace republican from south carolina legislation that uh, if they passed it would create um a pathway for britney spears and other people

to replace their private guardian Uh, or conservator. So it basically um It argues for more accountability. It argues, um, that um That we need more data on this stuff like you were saying how like no one knows how much money is tied up in this No one knows how many people are trying to get out of these. Yeah, there's just like it's it's shockingly, uh I don't want to just say willy nilly because that's probably not fair, but Understudied at least under deserved

Yeah, under observed for sure so, uh As of now in order to get out of a conservatorship you have to prove Fraud or abuse that that is has occurred To have that be replaced and this bill would kind of roll that back and say it doesn't necessarily have to be abuse or fraud It could just be that they don't aren't comfortable with it They are emotional well-being is not being met or whatever and just to make it a little bit easier to free someone up From these conservatorships and so we'll see that was uh

There was one a few years ago in 2019 that didn't get Beyond the house judiciary committee But everyone's kind of thinking With all this attention right now because of britney spears case that they might have a little momentum To get something like that done. Oh, yeah big time like there's a it's called the free act by the way Uh, I appreciate the acronym hashtag freedom Now freedom and right to emancipate from exploitation act. Okay. All right. I I can respect like bend and over backwards a little bit to make that work That was all right

I think chuck also one of the reasons why they um They have aired to this point on the side of making it more difficult to remove a conservator is because they've kind of um There's like a This maybe a Suspicion that you know You could have a fight or a falling out or something like that over something totally unrelated to the conservatorship And you know the person could be now the person could be like that's it

You're not my conservator anymore. I want you out of my life or whatever and the person might be great as their conservator And it might be a really good conservatorship But it just you know, there was that that moment or that following out So in that sense, it should be made difficult. But then on the other hand, it's like Is that really the way we should be airing should we be airing toward? You know away from the the rights and the the desires of the person who's whose life and responsibilities for their life has been taken away from them Like shouldn't that shouldn't they at least have the right to choose? Who's calling the shots for them? Who's making those decisions for them? And I think ultimately

I I kind of lean toward the the rights of the individual Yeah, I mean it also makes you wonder about you know, if they're let's say there's no kids involved and it's a case of um someone abusing drugs or something like It is an interesting slippery slope to think about whether an adult has a right to throw their life away Yes, and make bad decisions or whether or not it should be legal for someone to be able to step in and Then save somebody it's like that's just really

I don't even know how I feel about it. It's just an interesting thought the experiment I came across something called the the right to risk Where basically it's exactly what you just said like everybody has the right to just blow it completely including a fortune including fame including um, you know Alienating loved ones doing whatever you want to ruin your own life that you have that that right But I think the law recognizes that there are some some mental states That a person can can enter

to where They wouldn't otherwise want to do those things and I think that's what the people under who are running Brittany's conservatorship are saying that like Brittany isn't capable of keeping people who would Unduly influence her to to throw her life away At bay. She can't keep those people at bay. She doesn't understand the documents as she's signing and then there's whispers and or like hushed rumors of Like no the real reason she'll probably be in a

Permanent conservatorship is because there's some diagnosed mental illness That is just sealed because it's a medical record right and that that's kind of like what gets leaked out on the conservatorship side. So um I don't know. I I think having like a An attorney that is of her choosing who's sharp that is working for her and her alone getting into this and really finding out What's what and going into court? Yeah, I think that that would be uh, that's a I think that'll be a really I'm interested to see what the outcome of that is I don't see how that couldn't be a good step at least to have more

Investigation done by someone of her choosing. Yeah, because for years apparently Her big problem was not with being under a conservatorship. It was her dad being the conservator right and So he was co-conservators with a couple of people and she apparently even was fine with one of them for a little while but then Um, they resigned because she said she wasn't fine with them any longer And then now it's just back to her dad being in total soul control So I wonder if like if her dad is forced out and it's just strictly like lawyers and fiduciaries Who are in charge of her conservatorship if she would be like, no, this is fine. I'm fine with this

I wonder yeah It's gonna be interesting to see what happens with that and this legislation as they kind of go hand in hand. Absolutely Do you got anything else? I got nothing else. Uh, I do want to shout out My pal babs gray Barber gray and test barker are two comedians in LA and they Were in that documentary and have championed britney's case for a while and they have a new podcast out And it's called they had one called britney's gram britney's instagram the podcast

But now they have a new one called toxic colon and boy if we could get our new uh colon barbershop quartet inserted there that'd be great The britney spear story so that's getting a lot of its engine right now. Cool. Yeah, they're all over the place right now So big ups big ups If you want to know more about conservatorships and britney spears and uh, lance bass Well, you can just start searching the internet and jump down that rabbit hole and see what happens

And since I said that it's time of course for listener mail I'm gonna call this cool job that I never heard of this is from one of our irish friends. Oh, yeah, I love this one Hey guys first things first. Thanks for a really great podcast I've been listening every day since my first day as a delivery driver five years ago in dublin, ireland It's been the week driving all over the country and you've been my companions Uh last week I came across the episode jobs from a bygone era a classic And I wanted to share with you a job my great grandfather did that definitely applies He worked in dublin city as a knocker upper

And that was like wait what? A knocker upper was a job that existed at a time after the industrial revolution But before alarm clocks were widely available Uh to the poorest that filled the factories with workers Uh for a tiny weekly fee a knocker upper Was employed to knock on doors or tap on windows It's like a wake-up call in a hotel basically exactly Uh, they usually used to pull or a long stick or bamboo to tap on the bedroom windows. There's great picks

Uh online of a famous lady in london using a pea shooter Uh my great-grandfather though was an even rarer breed as he was known as a knocker uppers knocker upper That's niche He was employed by the other knocker uppers to wake them up. Wow So they could go and wake up the customers all over the city Eventually they were all put out of business when the country went electric Cheap alarm clocks hit the market But they were a snapshot in time and provided much needed service

Wanted to share this little bit of social history with you guys After everything you've given me. I look forward to a live show in ireland Sometime uh mic. We'd love to come back to ireland. We did did that show in uh, that was fun Dublin and it was one of the best. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a pretty great email mic. Thank you for that Um, hey, I have a little anecdote about knocked up About knocked up. Yeah, so when yumi was little she thought knocked up meant you were in trouble like you were grounded Yeah, and um, it led to at least one case of hilarity with her dad Asking where her friend was and yumi said, oh, she's knocked up. She can't come out

Her dad was like what she can't come out for nine months. This is like, yeah, this is like nine or ten years old I think so. Wow, that's very good stuff. So, uh, thanks mic. Thanks little yumi Uh, and thank you guys for listening and if you want to get in touch with us like mic did You can send us an email to stuff podcast at iheartradio.com Stuff you should know is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the iheart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows Hey, i'm lance bass host of the new iheart podcast frosted tips with lance bass Do you ever think to yourself?

What advice would lance bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because i'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boybander each week to guide you through life tell everybody you everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye. Bye. Bye. Bye Listen to frosted tips with the lance bass on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shatikular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe You can find in major league baseball international banks k-pop groups even the white house But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject something completely

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