 Britney Spears' father has agreed to step down as the singer's conservator, pledging to participate in an orderly transition to a new legal arrangement. Jamie Spears has controlled the affairs of his daughter Britney since 2008 when concerns were raised about her mental health. He was granted conservatorship over the pop star by a US court, which gave him control over Britney's financial affairs and many aspects of her personal life. Britney Spears has recently spoke about how the relationship became abusive, telling a judge that she had been drugged, forced to perform against her will and prevented from having children. According to the BBC, Jamie Spears' response to his daughter's petition was welcomed by her lawyer Matthew Rosengart, who called it a vindication for his client. We are pleased that Mr Spears and his lawyer have today conceded in a filing that he must be removed, he said in a statement. Yet he accused Jamie Spears of his own shameful and reprehensible attacks and said he should stop making false accusations and taking cheap shots. He said the singer's father should instead remain silent and step aside immediately. Mr Rosengart added that an investigation into the actions of those involved in managing her estate throughout the conservatorship would continue. It's obviously welcome that Britney Spears' father is now willing to give up his conservatorship over his daughter, but I mean it's really bizarre and also quite, I mean, you know, I mean it's worrying is an understatement that for such a long time this man had control over his adult daughter in a relationship that she didn't want to be in. I only discovered about conservatorships through this case and I think you know most people are as shocked as I have been. One of the things to bear in mind is that Britney Spears is uniquely legally disempowered by being in a conservatorship. So one, the attorneys being paid for for the conservators are being paid for out of her money in her estate. She has no option to stop funding those lawyers. Two, initially the attorney she had was not even of her own choosing. So there is a question being raised about potential conflicts of interest where the attorney who she didn't pick is able to represent her interests adequately, considering he's got vested interest in the conservatorship continuing so he can keep representing her and being paid by money from her estate. And three, now she has her own lawyer, she's got her own attorney. Three, she didn't even know that she could petition to bring the conservatorship to an end. Now, so far that's not been successful, but these are certainly gains. Jamie Spears having stepped down as his role as a conservator at some point when he deems the time to be right, that is a step forward. But again, she's in a uniquely disempowering position. It's not even clear what the criteria would be for her conservatorship to be deemed no longer necessary. So conservatorship usually is brought in and imposed when somebody is very, very old or is otherwise incapacitated from taking care of themselves or managing their affairs. Now with Britney Spears, obviously she's not very, very old, but also throughout the duration of this conservatorship, she's been working, she's been doing a vagus residency, she's been asked to talk. She's put out music, she's been dancing, she's been performing. These aren't usually things that somebody under a conservatorship would do. So you can see how this quite easily starts to look like a young woman who experienced a mental breakdown, who had some really tough issues to go through, and that was an opportunity to put her in a legal straight jacket, which meant that she can still be a moneymaker and a piggy bank for those around her, and she is legally prohibited from changing that arrangement at all. So yes, this is a step forward, but this is still an incredibly troubling case, and I think it also shows that sometimes just because somebody on the outside looks like they're very rich doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be very powerful. There are all sorts of legal means to inhibit somebody from exercising that power, particularly if they've experienced mental health issues in some kind of way, and they're vulnerable for that reason, particularly also if they're a woman. This is often reported as if it's a bit of a legal quirk. As I say, I didn't know that these things existed. I think many people didn't. But since it's become a very high-profile case, we keep hearing that the judge rules partly in favor of her dad. It's still very ambiguous. It seems like it's still difficult for her to get out of this relationship. And I would have assumed in any civilized society that the moment you realize that a 39-year-old woman can have her financial and personal affairs controlled by her father for a decade when she's uncomfortable in that position and she's doing nights at Vegas over and over again, making hundreds of thousands of pounds but which go to her father, the moment it's made public that that kind of thing is made possible by US law, there would be an unstoppable clamoring to stop it. And I do find it strange that it doesn't seem that there has been this overwhelming clamor to say, oh no, this is some weird quirk of our legal system that obviously needs to be changed. This isn't the only law that's on the American statute books, which is really troubling in terms of the amount of power it gives to a parent of somebody who has been deemed unfit for whatever reason. I was listening to a podcast called, it was part of the G series by Radiolab, I think it was named unfit, about the history of forced sterilizations of intellectually and physically disabled people. Now this law in many states is still on the statute books where if you are the parent of an intellectually or physically disabled child, you can go to the court and petition for that child to be forcibly sterilized. That is something that can still happen if they are deemed unfit. Now this is obviously a huge amount of power to exercise and not only that, the tendency has been to rule in favor of the parent and not in favor of the child who's got the disabilities. So I think this comes with an illegal context in which people who are deemed to be unfit for reasons of disability or mental health issue are denied full access to the rights that any other citizen would have.