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 too, Dave Kustin. So guest producer in your mind means ghost producer. And no, I don't think he's dead, are you dead, Dave? Well, not a real producer? What's going on here? So he is the producer of short Stuff, which is technically a spinoff 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. 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 saying thing, Oh no, no, what are you saying? Inhale? Yeah, I understand. I think everybody who didn't realize what episode they were listening to just Inhaled too. Um. I searched high and low for something to relate this too. 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 what I'm trying to say. Oops, you did it again. Oh I happened to be wearing a Catholic schoolgirls skirt right now too. Uh. Yeah, so this obviously came to me because of the Britney Spear situation. Uh. 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, uh, 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 uh, 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 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 a Manda Binds, who is another child star who kind of publicly melted down. I guess you could put in whose mother got her into conservatorship, which I think she's still under today. Um, and Bristles under it publicly too. So UM. Most of the time, when you're talking about conservatorships, which is basically one person legally have think the ability and authority to make this decisions on behalf of somebody else. You're talking about somebody who has gone into a coma, UM, somebody who has had um uh cognitive um difficulties maybe for life. UM, somebody just suffering from Alzheimer's something like that. Much much more more often than not, it's it's something that's part of elder law. A conservatorship is. So it's really we it's rare, weird, you can just say weird. It's very weird that Britney Spears very healthy, um with it active. UM Like, I think she's like thirty somethings early thirties right now, Um, No, late thirtis. I think she's thirty nine. Um, she that that she would be in a conservatorship, but she has, she has been since she was twenty six and 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 going to 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 the conservative ship at this point. Who knows. Yeah, so, um, just a little quick background if you didn't know, uh, and not to get too in the weeds. But in two thousand and eight, Britney Spears had uh what people have described online as a kind of a public melting down her. Her family was worried about her, She was hospitalized for mental health issues 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, Um, 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 recular time in her life. And here we are in one, 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 uh and in certain cases or 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 conservator ship 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 thirteen years. Um. So well, I mean, we'll like, we'll talk about how her case applies, you know, um, throughout the episode for sure, but just to kind of like lay down the groundwork for what a conservatorship is, um. 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. Um. Some states call guardianship, other states call it conservator ship. UM. But the whole point of it is that somebody has been deemed unable to make good decisions for themselves to some sometimes physically take care of themselves or maybe even both, and so the court um has been petitioned to kind of give someone else the ability to make those decisions to take care of that person. And the point of it, if you really, if you take away the whole Britney Spears thing and any kind of um sketchiness that can kind of pervade this whole kind of this, this this legal weirdness. UM, it's kind of an act of love to step in and say, this person is in really bad dire straits right now, and um, 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 taken care of. That's what it's supposed to be about at base sure, and ideally that's how it goes down. UM. There is not a lot of data about conservatorships and how often they are petitioned to get uh UM uninstated. I think it's removed like uninstated. I like it too. It's a great, great word. Now Okay, I just made up a new Wordever, you could win boggle with that. Chuck uh. And we'll get to the you know why that is a little bit later. But Um, when you petition a court, what happens is there's an evaluation that the court orders of this person who is known as a conservative, and the person in charges the conservatore, 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. Um, the person is allowed to speak on their behalf at this time. Um, it's not the kind of thing where you can, uh just be railroaded. And I'm not exactly sure the details of Britney Spears and when it first happened as far as if she was like, yeah, this is for the best right now, or if she thought him in the beginning, but I think she was. Um, you're saying no, no to which one to to the first that or that she was she was in favor of I'll tell you a second, all right, we'll goad you want me to tell you now we have to wait a second. Any longer. Okay, I'll fill you and Chuck get that. I watched some of the documentary, but I had other things to do. I saw the documentary two 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. UM. But I also read a I read a really good New Yorker um article, a recent one from July three, I think called Britney Spears Conservative Conservatorship Nightmare by Ronan Pharaoh and Jia Tolentino to reporters, and it is just a moment by moment breakdown on well Brittney'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 um 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 way that this is described as it was a ten minute thing, and it was they went in and and as far like on the surface, the her parents went in and petitioned the judge in ten minutes later, the judge granted full I guess temporary conservatorship um without any any other formalities. That's how it That's how it is, you know, on its face. And then the judges denying that there was any back room um eels 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? When she was evaluated? That's the thing. I don't know that she was evaluated. She had just undergone two fifties, where the the basically the states van Halens too, not just one too, she had a fifty one fifty and an o U eight one too. Oh man, she um she no. So the fifties where somebody can basically say this person is is um is mentally unstable right now, they may be a harm to themselves or others, And the fire department comes and gets you and takes you off to the hospital where you're kept against your will for seventy two 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 an evaluation that actually took place as part of the conservatorship. I get the impression that, like, oh, she said to Fies, 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 to yeah, alright. So there are some different types of conservator ships. 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 conservative themselves have autonomy, but they don't have financial autonomy. Um, 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 conservatory 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, um, so they'll have that at least, But yeah, for the big purchases, no way, uh. Physical is when their health and basically medical decisions, their health, their life kind of everything is controlled by the conservativetour and I'm gonna mess it up at some point, um, whether or not they want to go to a therapist, or whether or not they wanted to have certain medications. Supposedly they you know, you can't make someone take medication um 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, and I mean on that in particular, what I saw was that the carrot and the stick that her father uses against her is visitation rights for her to see her kids. Because 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 pop rocks. He didn't help and you know, it's being a star. All of that stuff did not help um. But that don't it was you know, it's her kids that is really like the dagger that just gets turned in her chest every time, like she she had to like leave or they had to leave um, and that her father dangles that over her, like if you don't do this, if you don't sign this contractor and do these performances, you know, I can't let you see the kids or whatever. So that's apparently that's because he gets a cut. He does. He gets one point five percent of all new deals too. Yeah, and she's made a lot of money in the past, you know, years that she's been blocked down. She's 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 for her and Pops. Uh, there's general conservator ships 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 uh 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 uh. Usually this is a case where it may be like, um, 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, um, 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, 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, uh, and then you've got Sometimes they're categorized by their length. You can have short term, temporary, or permanent. With short term, um, usually it's not more than a few months than ninety days, and it's because of something that happened. It's an immediate need. Um, 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. Um, temporary can turn into permanent, whereas I don't think short term can. Yeah, I think temporaries 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. Um. Although one of the things that I saw is that finances are not supposed to be a reason for conservatorship, right, It's supposed to be 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 predicated on that that it's almost like 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, they placed her in conservative 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 systems, and especially it's nuts that it's been ongoing for so long too and so public. Yeah, it's a very interesting case. Uh all right, let's take a break. Yeah, yeah, alright, no name is Steve's not saying nay, what if they've just piped in. I was like, no, keep going, keep going, I'm the conservative here. We'll be back right after this. Learning's stop with Joshua John Stop. If you want to know then you're in luck. Just listen up to Chuck Fuson. So, Chuck, there was one other type of conservatorship by duration that we didn't mention. That is apparently pretty typical, which is permanent. Oh yeah, I mentioned that. I guess I thought it was self explanatory. It's permanent. Go on, well, it's permanent in spirit. Um. But you can, as we're seeing now, file to have it removed or I don't even know that word I coined earlier, unreinstated. I don't even think um, I'm sorry, re uninstated, so um noninstated. See the whole point of coining new words, you gotta be able to use them at the you know, drop of the hat. Yeah, but I mean you gotta take some practice, you know what I'm saying. So the reason permanent, though um is so typical, and as far as conservatorships goes because most of the time when you end up in conservatorship, it's because you suffered some sort of very debilitating problem or you've had it your whole life, like it's just it's it's it's a long term issue that you're dealing with. So you're this is a long term solution of permanent conservatorship, right, And that really ties hand in hand with kind of the next part about how to get one um. 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 there 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 there like Ricky Lake, we're engaged now, Lake. Wow, you really pulled that one out of some thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh, you know we mentioned stuff like dimension Alzheimer's. That is a very very common case um for conservator ships. Or if you have, like you said, from birth, if you have some sort of um, permanent disability, um, 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, had that conservatorship. Yeah, and and basically there's like a two pronged tests to applying a conservatorship. I'm gonna say it correctly the first time one of these one of these times in this episode, I can't even say conservatives I can't. That's great. Check. Um, so is the person unable to basically meet their own basic needs like care for themselves, feed themselves, that kind of stuff, um, in which case there would be a conservatorship of the person where you can make like medical decisions for them, maybe living arrangements, like decide if they're going to live in a long term care facility something like that, or and or um. Can they make decisions for themselves which are um sound financially like can they understand a contract that they're signing. Can they understand that if they, you know, buy 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 um substantial wealth or if they are just totally unable to care for themselves. Yeah, and you know the way this goes down ideally and I think more typically than what we're seeing in Britney Spears cases. You know, medical records are presented there, the probate or family court is handling this, the conservaty is either understands and goes along with it because they know it's for their own good or um isn't you know, it is clearly not capable, which is why they need the conservatory to to begin with 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 kid 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 a conservatorship. Um, 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, two of which go platinum, and then maintaining a Vegas residency and generating a hundred thirty million dollars in income over you know, ten thirteen years something like that. 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 Brittany person. Like I understand that those people have um 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 t leaf reading and trying to figure out what's really going on here. And it's it's entirely possible that that this conservatorship has kind of helped Brittany. Like the people who defend who been involved and defend it, say, you know, she had a couple of million dollars left some of the worst people in the world surrounding her. Um, her money was going fast, her brand was starting to go, and now she's worth like sixty to eighty million dollars. She's back on top. She doesn't have a bunch of scummy people hanging around her UM. And then the scummy people are like no, these people came in and wrestled control of Brittany's own life and now they're in charge of her and they're they're builking 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 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 TV's ready, you know, you get hold on hold on. I don't know, you get run in Pharaoh. That's right, Frank Sinatra Jr. That's right? Is no, he's junior junior right? Oh well, I'm he supposedly no, I mean he's supposedly what the Allan's 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 come on, that's that's Frank's kid. Sure, but who knows supposedly not? I don't know. Okay, we're just hitting the celebrity beat all over the place. Uh do you remember kids beat on Nickelodeon? Ye see you next. 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, h yeah, I I don't remember anything but that catchphrase. That's same here here, nothing else. Maybe we had a group hallucination. It's possible, like the Bear and Stain bears. Uh oh yeah, that's right. What's that called? Uh yeah? Alright? So uh in her case in California and this House to Works article that we got a lot of this from highlights this um 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 Conservatories, where it does lay out about a dozen rights of someone like Britney Spears, which one of which is they can directly receive their salary. So supposedly she like it's it's not like the checks getting written to Jamie Spears and he doles it out. Supposedly, by law, she is receiving her salary. Still, oh oh that's not at all what I heard. Oh really, she has her living expenses met and they total about four hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year um. So she has everything she wants, but she doesn't pay for anything herself. That doesn't mean 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 yeah. Yeah. What I'm just saying is is like the check doesn't come name, Yeah, no, it's all it's all in her name. Still, the right to receive calls and mail and see people. Uh, you can change your will Um, 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 the whole Free Brittany crew has basically been like that that lawyer is chummy with her dad, like he's working for her dad rather than her you know. Um, so yeah, it might 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. Uh. What we're seeing play out now or another couple of things on the list the request to either change conservators or in the conservatorship, they are allowed to out, Um, 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. Uh, their medical decisions and business transactions are should be under their control and uh was there one more UM. So basically, anything you're allowed to do at the at the beginning of it the conservatorship, you should be able to throw out. UM. 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 under a California conservatorship, so all of those should very much apply to her. UM. But she has said recently that like her father won't let her get married, he decides who she can date or not date. And again I don't think that's that's legal, but I think he can threaten like um uh um, not just visitation like UM, restraining orders. He can take out restraining orders in her name against whomever he deems um like inappropriate, and I guess can demonstrate to the court that this person might be a bad influence on her UM and that that that's probably how he is 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 I U d that her father won't let her remove 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 is levied, you have to, as a I would think as the court, have to look into that kind of thing. Yeah. And there there have been court appointed in instigators before um, 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 Brittany crowd or anything like that, but like that was their report and their recommendation. Um. But it's like you're saying, you know, we're seeing this from the outside. So like the people who who are on the inside in this conservatorship point out, like you know, she wasn't worth very much, um then and she's now, so she's kind of thriving under this arrangement, which is apparently a way that a conservators somebody could end up in a conservatorship for the rest of the life, 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 a 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 it sounds nightmarish. If if if it's like as bad as from what Brittany is 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 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, Brittany's father was a guy named Andrew Wallett and he was court appointed. 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 C. O. D. And he was for many many many years actually, and actually it 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. Uh, 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 towards the end of four hundred and twenty six thousand dollars 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 everyday person and their quiet life and their little finances and making sure they're taken care of. As as conservator of Britney Spears, the state, he was like running basically a international 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 four d 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 kind of makes sense in that respect, although if you look at the normal amount that it can 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. Um. The big hooking point here, though, is is that if you're a financial conservator, you're not supposed to be using that person's money for your own benefit. Like you said, you are allowed to take a salary, and it says in this article somewhere between forty and a hundred dollars per hour, which means Jamie Spears uh is taking a hundred dollars per hour at forty hours a week. Because he's getting sixteen thousand dollars a month and that that's what it comes to, like the basically the top rate at forty hours per week, 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 commisserate with what a conservator historically can take. Yeah, so Andrew Walllett, if you look at it from the from the perspective, well he's a conservator and not actually like running the business, then he'd yeah, he'd have to work more than eighty hours a week, fifty 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 conservatory, 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've gotta 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 conservative So that's ideally, Um, now we reached the reality and that's this is one good thing of Britney spears um uh conservatorship and all 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's 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, and other cases they have no idea. And as part of the report, the g a O basically made up UM identities in like four different states around the country and applied for conservatorship and they were granted in all four cases. Are all four states conservatorship to 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 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 I think they call it isolated UM, medicated and liquidated UM and kept away from their family and their loved ones UM. 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, let's take a break. Thanks, thanks for me, 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. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen to Chuck Shon. Alright, so I mentioned before we get into how you can terminate this. Uh, this sort of dovetails with with your uh, with your great soapbox moment right before the break. If I may say, uh, there's 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. Where you just read it an hour a half ago. It was published an hour and a half ago. Wow, that is late breaking for stuff. You should know. This is super late breaking. Uh. Two members of the House UH co sponsored. And you know when you see these bills co sponsored 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 you uh. Coast answers. Rep. Charlie Christ Democrat of Florida and Nancy Mace Republican from South Carolina legislation that if they passed, it would create, um a pathway for Britney Spears and other people to replace their private guardian 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 There's just like it's it's shockingly Uh. I don't want to just say willie nilly because that's probably not fair, but understudied at least, 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, their 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 there was one a few years ago in twenty nineteen that didn't get beyond the House Judiciary Committee. But everyone's kind of thinking with all this attention right now because the Britney Spears case, that they might have a little momentum to get something like that done. Oh yeah, big time. Like there's called the Free Act. By the way, Uh, they appreciate the acronyms freedom now freedom and Right to Emancipate from Exploitation Act. Okay, all right, I I can respect like bending over backwards a little bit to make that work. That was all right, okay, 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 conservatore 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 conservatory more, I want you out of my life or whatever. And the person might be great as their conservator um, 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 rights and 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 kind of leaned towards 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 of using drugs or something like. It is an interesting slippery slope to think about whether an adult has a right to throw their life away and and make bad decisions, or whether or not it should be legal for someone to be able to step in and save somebody. It's like, that's just really I don't even know how I feel about. It's just an interesting thought experiment. I came across something called the right to risk, where basically it's exactly what they 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. Um, and that that's kind of like what gets leaked out on the conservatorship side. So UM, I don't know. I think having like uh 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. Um, I think that that would be Uh, that's a I think that will 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 conservatorship. It was her dad being the conservator 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, Uh, 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. I do want to shout out my pal Babs Gray Barbera Gray and Tess Barker are two comedians in l A. And they were in that documentary and have Champion in Britney's case for a while. And they have a new podcast out and it's called They had one called Britney's Graham Brittany's Instagram the podcast but down. They have a new one called Toxic Colon. And boy, if we get our new uh Colan barbershop quartet interned there, that'd be great. The Britney Spears story, so that's getting a lot of its interest right now. Cool. Yeah, they're all over the place right now, so big ups, big ups. Uh. If you want to know more about Conservatorships and Brittney Spears and Lance Bass, well you can just start searching the internet and jump down that rabbit hole see what happens. And since I said that, it's time, of course for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this cool job that I've 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 I 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 to the poorest that filled the factories with workers 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, they usually used to poll or a long stick or bamboo to tap on the bedroom windows. There's great picks online of a famous lady in London using a pea shooter. Uh. My great grandfather though it was an even rarer breed as he was known as a knocker uppers knocker upper. He was employed by the other knocker ruppers 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. People learn clocks hit the market, but they were snapshot in time and provided much needed service. I wanted to share this little bit of social history with you guys after everything you've given me. Look forward to a live show in Ireland sometime. Uh, Mike, we'd love to come back to Ireland. We did did that show and that was fun Dublin and it was one of the best. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a pretty great email, Mike, 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 you me, so she's knocked up. She came up dead. It's like, what can't come out for a nine months? Is like, yeah, this is like nine or ten years old, I think. So. Thanks Mike, thanks little you me uh, and thank you guys for listening. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Mike did, you can send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot 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.