COMMENTARY: Conservatorships legally strip human rights

In a shocking, 24-minute statement to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny, Britney Spears detailed the 13 years of abuse she received under her famed conservatorship. 

The next few days saw Spears in a similar situation to what she faced in 2007 — in the headlines of gossip rags, the New York Times and on Perez Hilton. However, this time, people weren’t discussing her ability to mother or a shaved head but wondering how this magical conservatorship got so harrowing.

Spears is not the only victim of a conservatorship. In 2017, the Department of Justice reported there were 1.3 million people in the United States under a court-sanctioned conservatorship or guardianship. This means that every day, people across the nation are stripped of either their rights to their estate, their person or both. 

Abuse in conservatorships is not unique to Spears’ case, nor was it in the highly publicized case of the late disc jockey and voice actor Casey Kasem. In 2020, Netflix released the Rosamund Pike-led film, “I Care A Lot,” that chronicled a woman who increasingly benefited from her abuse of the conservatorship program. 

While conservatorships, in theory, exist as governmental protection for those who are a danger to themselves or the people around them, the practice is an unjust and cruel attempt at dehumanizing a person based on age, mental acuity or both. Since the first utterance of the word in a court of law, a conservatorship equaled a conservatee stripped of their rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. In many cases, like Spears’, this also equates to a loss of reproductive rights, forced labor and employment, and dictation of location by her 69-year-old father. 

The Texas government attempted to mitigate this cruel attack on human rights when it opted to limit conservatorships to parents taking control of their minors and enacted a practice called guardianship for those over 18. Guardianship in Texas forbids a guardian from using force to give medication and from placing an individual in a mental health facility. 

Moreover, Texas courts deem guardianships to be “the last and the best available choice” and offer other less-restrictive, less-dehumanizing options like designating a supported decision-maker, utilizing money management programs, assigning a representative payee, and implementing a living will document, medical power of attorney or durable power of attorney. 

While these options allow for a more humane and ethical approach to the systematic and legal stripping of rights, the institution of conservatorships and guardianships is, at its core, wrong. When the conservators easily profit off of the system and off the conservatees, it is a flawed system. 

There are situations, especially for elderly citizens, that require additional assistance, but the current way of implementing conservatorships allows for easy corruption. Allowing family members to aid in daily life decisions is a logical concept, however, family members are not always the best option. The concept that familial members are always the right choice is fallacious. 

Making conservatorships applicable only to those under 18 and instilling a more lax guardianship for legal adults is better than the all-or-nothing plans used in other states. While Texas’ current system is a step in the right direction, more still needs to be done. 

As a possible way to prevent conservatorship abuse, there needs to be an assessment period every two years by a state-funded non-partisan group. This would allow temporary conservatorships to end when they need to and not go on indefinitely without oversight. Moreover, conservatees deserve the right to hire their own legal and health professionals to advise and assist when needed. 

Moreover, Spears’ case proves that no matter who you are, the U. S. legal system allows one person to decide what rights to remove and for how long. In theory, a judge should be a non-partisan third party figure, but that may not be true in every situation. Even if a judge is not aware of their intrinsic and internal prejudices, they prevent a non-biased verdict.

A better option for this type of situation would allow for a panel of judges to hear these cases or the courts assign a new judge every two years. At the very least, the conservatee should be allowed to petition the courts for a new judge if the conservatee feels like the judge is favoring the conservator.

While fans and supporters have four albums, two concert tours and a Las Vegas residency to prove Spears no longer needs a conservatorship, it should not have to take a massively successful career to prove one is no longer needed. People, no matter their mental or physical state, deserve the ability to retain basic human rights. 

Conservatorships for adults need to cease. While guardianships are a step in the right direction, more revisions to the system need to happen and they need to happen now. The legal removal of human rights is an absolute terror and everyone involved in the systematic stripping of these rights should be horrified by their actions.