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- Here's all of the main people who've been paid by Britney Spears' financial estate during her 13 years of conservatorship
Here's all of the main people who've been paid by Britney Spears' financial estate during her 13 years of conservatorship
Kim Renfro,Jacob Shamsian
- Britney Spears' financial estate has been paying for the costs associated with her conservatorship.
- Over the last 13 years, six main people (including her parents and their lawyers) have been paid.
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In the 13 years that Britney Spears was living under a conservatorship, her financial estate had been paying out lawyers fees, business fees, and other expenses for people involved.
Legal documents detail that the singer had been paying even the people she said acted against her wishes — like her father, his lawyers, and his security team. And as a conservatee, she hadn't had any kind of veto power over how her money has been spent.
Court filings show that a constellation of lawyers and family members have made money from their roles in the conservatorship, which was terminated Friday by a Los Angeles judge.
Still, Spears's attorney, Mathew Rosengart, may also try to fight to claw some of that money back, although he'd have to meet hurdles.
Here are the main people and law firms who have been paid by Spears' estate under the conservatorship, according to legal filings.
Jamie Spears has been paid a personal salary and concert commissions over the last decade, potentially totaling over $2 million.
Conservators are required to file annual accountings of the conservatee's assets and the amount spent in the past year.
Large swaths of Jamie Spears' accounting reports have been redacted from the public. Some details — a 62-cent interest payment from City National Bank here, a $70 Walgreens purchase there — are listed and available to pore through. But dozens of pages of disbursements and business revenue are blacked out.
Among the publicly listed figures, however, are co-conservator fees for Jamie Spears. The 2020 report says the singer's father was given $128,000 in co-conservator fees that year (Andrew Wallet, the other co-conservator, made $27,100 over the same period). The 2019 accounting report includes similar figures.
The 2020 accounting report also says the conservatorship paid out more than $75,000 in "Conservatorship Miscellaneous Expenses," as well as approximately another $100,000 for an expense that's redacted in the documents.
California law allows conservators to pay themselves expenses and fees for their work, and the accounting reports are reviewed by the judge overseeing the conservatorship.
But a July filing from Rosengart contextualizes some of the fees Jamie Spears has paid himself.
"By way of illustration only, since at least 2009, Mr. Spears has been paying himself $16,000 per month from Ms. Spears' Estate, $2,000 more than he has allotted to Ms. Spears," Rosengart wrote. "Mr. Spears also pays himself an additional $2,000 per month for office expenses — again, from Ms. Spears' Estate."
Aside from conservatorship fees, Jamie Spears has been entitled to revenue from his daughter's record sales and concerts.
The precise figures aren't listed in the unredacted portions of the accounting reports filed to court. One letter filed to court by Rosengart estimated Jamie Spears made at least $2.1 million from Britney Spears' Las Vegas residency in the mid-2010s, and another $500,000 from her 2011 Femme Fatale tour.
Jamie Spears' lawyer did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.
Jamie's lawyers have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and asked for more than $1 million.
Jamie Spears has hired a number of different lawyers over the course of the conservatorship.
Back in October, he swapped in Alex Weingarten, a partner in Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, as his main lawyer to replace Vivian L. Thoreen of Holland & Knight.
But while Thoreen and Weingarten may be dealing with the more public-facing issues in the case, Jamie Spears has also hired another law firm, Freeman, Freeman & Smiley LLP, to keep the books in order.
All of their fees are collectively assessed as "Conservator Legal Fees" on the accounting report.
In the 2020 version of the report, the legal fees totaled more than $346,000. There was another $24,000 in fees posted that year, as well as more than $17,000 in "Conservator Legal Costs."
The conservator legal fees in the 2019 report totaled nearly $128,000 with another $135,000 in fees and expenses.
Letters filed by Rosengart say Holland & Knight requested more in fees after the 2020 accounting report was filed in August of that year, and as media attention around Spears' case grew.
He said in a July 2021 letter that it sought more than $1.3 million in fees from October 17, 2020 to June 30, 2021, including more than $541,000 for "Media Matters," which, according to Rosengart, came out to between $500 and $900 per hour.
Lou Taylor and her management firm Tri Star managed the estate's business affairs for a decade.
Tri Star, a management firm run by Jamie Spears' friend Lou Taylor, was hired to be the business manager of the estate between 2010 and 2020.
Taylor quit the role in late 2020, citing death threats following media attention to the estate's controversies.
The public versions of the 2019 and 2020 accounting reports list only a few hundred dollars each year paid to the firm.
It's also possible that additional fees paid to Tri Star would be included in the "General Administration Expenses" portion of the accounting reports. The 2019 version of the report shows that the Estate paid out nearly $7.8 million in such expenses, but only about $29,000 are identified in the non-redacted portions.
The public version of the 2020 version is even more obscure and doesn't list how much money was paid out under that category.
In an August letter, Rosengart said Jamie Spears gave Tri Star money he shouldn't have.
"In December 2019, Mr. Spears inexplicably approved a payment to Tri Star in excess of $300,000 above the approximate $200,000 that was supposedly payable to Tri Star at the time," Rosengart wrote. "This $300,000 payment was not due to any extra duties or work performed by Tri Star."
"To the contrary, for whatever reason, Mr. Spears complied with Tri Star's request for a $500,000 payment from the Estate as a 'floor.' More problematically, this payment was sought (and paid) despite Ms. Spears' indefinite early-2019 hiatus," he added in the letter.
Taylor's lawyer did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Lynne Spears, Britney's mother, has been living in a "mansion" paid for by her daughter.
In an August 2021 filing, Jamie Spears (via his lawyers) said Lynne had been living in a house paid for by Britney for the past 13 years.
The filing stated: "Despite their estranged relationship, the Conservatorship Estate, during the entire duration of the Conservatorship, has paid and continues to pay for the mansion in Louisiana where Lynne lives, including all of her utility bills, weekly maid service, and all maintenance (totaling upwards of $150,000 per year and to date, nearly $2,000,000 in total)."
Lynne Spears' lawyers did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.
For more details on this specific filing, read Insider's report here.
Lynne is also requesting that Britney's estate pay for her legal fees. A decision about this request will be made at a December 2021 hearing.
Lynne Spears filed a petition in November requesting that her daughter's conservatorship estate pay for her legal fees incurred since 2019.
The documents, filed by Lynne Spears' lawyers and reviewed by Insider, begin by saying why Lynne Spears sought legal counsel from a firm called Jones, Swanson, Huddell & Daschbach in 2019.
They say she believed her daughter was enduring a "crisis" in early 2019 and wanted to "get involved to help Britney free herself from what she saw as a very controlling existence."
Here's a breakdown of the legal fees being requested:
- Jones, Swanson, Huddell & Daschbach: $840,000, to which Jones Swanson is willing to apply a 40% discount to $504,000
- Ginzburg & Bronshteyn, APC: $146,548
The filing adds: "In taking on the representation of Lynne Spears, the mission of counsel was clear and simple: do whatever it took to assist Britney to break the restrictions imposed by the conservatorship and move in the direction of the removal of Jamie as conservator, and, ultimately, total termination of the entire conservatorship."
For more details on this specific filing, read Insider's full report here.
Britney's court-appointed lawyer for many years, Sam Ingham, and his legal fees were paid by her estate - he reportedly had a salary of $520,000 per year
Ingham was appointed by a California judge in 2008, and remained in that role until the summer of 2021.
According to a July report from New Yorker reporters Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino, "Spears covers his annual salary of $520,000."
If that salary had been paid out every year, that means Ingham's legal fees from Spears totaled over $6 million in the last 13 years.
Ingham stepped down as her lawyer when a new judge overseeing the case granted Spears the right to handpick her own legal counsel. She selected Mathew Rosengart to take his place.
Ingham did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.
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