Britney Spears’ former lawyer Adam Streisand goes deep into the details of Britney’s conservatorship.

[Martian_M00d]

43 minutes ago, Geralt_of_Rivia said:

I've made the effort to annotate the important bits and quote some important things they mention. I may have missed or misheard something they've said so please don't quote me on that. What's more, I'd ask you to listen to the podcast and think objectively about what Adam and Noah are saying. In my opinion, Streisand supports Britney but he’s also trying to remain objective and works with the facts he’s being presented with. Don’t forget that he is a lawyer and he must be 100% professional about what he’s doing. The case is indeed very complex even for Adam Streisand. He was asked by Britney to represent her in court and he did so, but once he went there, the judge told him that Britney lacked the capacity to hire her own lawyer. AS A LAWYER, he was faced with the difficult decision to decide what would be best for Britney BASED ON THE EVIDENCE he had and the one he didn’t. Unfortunately, he didn’t have her medical record and thus concluded that it’d be best for Britney if he stepped down and that’s what he ultimately did.

Once again, I know we care about, love and support Britney but we sometimes also need to leave our feelings on the doorstep and judge objectively. Don't be too quick to cancel Adam Streisand for doing his job properly (which was in accordance with the evidence he had at the time).

Here are my notes and please read the final paragraph by Noah:

- Streisand first explains what a conservatorship is and why it’s normally put in place.

- Says that the real problem with Britney’s case is that ‘we don’t really know what’s happening behind the scenes’

- Having a conservator of the estate ensures that the trustee is doing their job properly

- They say that Britney cannot sign a contract herself about where and when to perform unless her conservator does so on her behalf whereas if there’s no conservatorship (but a trust instead), she’d have a trustee still managing her assets (money or real estate) but they won’t interfere with her day-to-day affairs

- Conservatorships are fairly limited to protect somebody. Streisand explains that he often gets calls from concerned parents about their children who are adults and struggling with **** problems. He responds to them that a conservatorship will not be a good idea because you can’t really force anybody in a conservatorship to be compliant with taking medications or force them to go to a treatment programme/lockdown facility.

- There is a whole separate conservatorship called LPS-conservatorships in California, which allows you to lock somebody up, force them to take medication, etc. These are rare. You must prove that the person is gravely disabled and that they can cause harm to themselves. However, only facilities such as hospitals or mental health institutions can ask for that. Not family members or any other concerned parties.

- The kind that Britney is in is not an LPS-one.

- Streisand refutes that Britney can’t leave the house or go for a walk, but he appreciates the concern from the public and says that it is important for her case in that it sheds light on her situation.

- Streisand says that the law system in California has elasticity but that it's also built on people, which means that occasionally you will find people that misjudge, are corrupt, and might not take the right decision because they’re not that smart or are being unethical. However, he says that he’s yet to see a better judicial system than the one Americans have.

-  He says once again that no one opposed the conservatorship at the time of its placement and that even Britney was somewhat complicit with it because it’d be difficult to oppose. Streisand says that ‘there was clearly medical evidence that she has fairly serious mental illness’ but he didn't and still doesn’t know what that is. The fact that everything was very public didn’t help her situation: Kevin not allowing her to see her kids, the paparazzi hounding her. If you have an underlying mental illness, such a situation would make anybody go out of control (not crazy).

-  It was clear that the court was going to put some protection on her. Britney’s biggest wish was to not have her father as the conservator. Then she wanted to get more control.

- The law doesn’t say you can’t have a lawyer represent you if you’re a conservatee. However, the court had decided to appoint a lawyer for Britney and dismissed Adam from the case. He says that judge Goetz was brand new to the probate court and she didn’t know Streisand, so in his opinion, she probably thought that Streisand was part of the gang that was trying to steal from Britney. He says that had she known who he was, she probably would’ve taken a different decision. In the end, she decided to appoint Sam Ingham.

-  Streisand finds it curious why in the past 12 years Ingham never contested the appointment of her father as the conservator. He says that it’s possible that Britney made another decision at the time or that the court-appointed counsel wasn’t advocating the one thing that was important for her.

-  Streisand says that the job of the lawyer is to represent their client’s wishes and that a lawyer should not be convinced in any way whether what their client wants is substantial; they still need to represent them in court. Sometimes a lawyer may disagree but that normally happens if there's something unethical. Because there’s no evidence that Ingham has been unethical, we can assume that Britney may have never expressed a desire to terminate the conservatorship; this may explain why nothing’s been contested in court in the past 13 years.

-  Streisand finds it peculiar how when he met with Britney, the most important thing for her was not to have her father as the conservator and once the court appointed Sam Ingham, that thing had never really been expressed from her lawyer for 12 years until last year. Streisand asks: ‘why wait for that long?’ Why does Britney state that she doesn’t want her father to be her conservator 12 years later when that was the number one thing she wanted prior to the placement of the conservatorship? This puts the spotlight on Ingham because if he hasn’t advocated for her wishes not to have her father as her conservator, then he may well not have advocated for other things too.

-  Streisand says that there’s a potential weakness in the system because it has to rely on people and in Britney’s case, there’s a conflict of interest between her wishes and her lawyer’s interests (to earn money).

-  Hypothetically, if Britney decides that she doesn’t want to be represented in court by Ingham anymore, she can phone another lawyer who can then testify in court and object Ingham’s position as a lawyer (despite the fact that Britney cannot legally sign a contract with that lawyer) OR if Britney’s unhappy with Ingham, she can tell him that she doesn’t want him to represent her anymore and it’ll be Ingham’s ethical decision then to go to the judge and say that he thinks that he shouldn’t be Britney’s lawyer anymore because she cannot confide with him anymore. Then the judge would have to decide if such a change would be appropriate.

- Streisand says that at the time he believed that stepping down from her case could actually help Britney which is why he didn’t push to contest. Unfortunately, we don’t know what mental illness she may have.

- He says that we can’t just look at her situation in a vacuum. If they’ve indeed used her kids against her, we have to see the other side as well. In other words, if she’s indeed mentally handicapped and does need treatment, but is a danger for her kids, in that case, using her kids against her may not be totally inappropriate.

- There’s a profound uncertainty in the case and we don’t know what we don’t know.

- Streisand asks if her case is not a case of misogyny in a system that is paternalistic. ‘He stresses that the conservator could’ve been a thousands of people. It didn’t have to be her father. If the one thing this system is designed for is to help vulnerable people then why in the world would you give the control and power of the person (Britney) to a person (her father) who makes her feel less in control and more vulnerable?’

Noah Feldman (the person’s podcast) concludes with the following: 

‘Under the conservatorship system as it exists, Britney does, at least in principle, have the mechanism she could use to draw attention to any dislike or dissatisfaction she has with her lawyer or with the conservatorship. But ‘we don’t know’ as Adam emphasized whether there are potential distortions in the system that nevertheless exist in which somehow Britney is threatened so that she’s unable to raise those concerns or feel she’s unable to raise those concerns. The whole issue is therefore at least as complicated, and I think actually much more complicated than it appeared to be in the documentary. And it demonstrates that power is complexly deployed in our legal system. You could be very rich and very famous and still find yourself represented by a court-appointed attorney and perhaps without the power to change the basic circumstances in which you’re operating legally speaking. At the same time, there are also available protections in the system. As Adam pointed out, Britney CAN leave her house. The conservator CANNOT in practical terms block her from doing most of the things that she might choose to do. What’s more, her assets are in trust and the trustee of that trust is not the conservator. The takeaway? Power is deployed in very complicated ways in the legal system. The legal system designs itself and tries to operate in such a way as to use mutual checks so that lawyers check lawyers and we reduce the probabilities of fundamental distortion. But, as Adam said, that process still depends to a great extent on the assumption that lawyers will behave ethically. I would love to believe, as a law professor and a person who cares about the legal system, that all lawyers are ethical but as probably every single person listening knows, that’s just not always the case. There is no magic bullet solution to the potential for unethical lawyering and it remains a challenge to figure out how legal power can be deployed as ethically as is possible.’

Apologies for any mistakes. @Slayer you might want to attach this at the beginning of the thread, if you find it useful 

Thank you for this 

[DuranDuran]

37 minutes ago, Geralt_of_Rivia said:

I kind of disagree with your first point because he's said on multiple occasions that Britney acknowledged the fact that she knew she wouldn't get away without a conservatorship so she accepted it in the end. We've heard him say that Britney said those things, he didn't propose them. She only asked him to advocate for her wishes about not having her father as the conservator and once that was done, they could potentially continue to fight for more freedom.

Ugh, you made me re-listen this ****, Lol

1) 15:46

Q: Britney didn't consent to this Cship, did she?

A: She didn't

2) 21:11 where he said that he was the one who advised her not to resist Сship and etc. And that she was able to take his advice

 

[Mr. Cavill]

5 minutes ago, DuranDuran said:

Ugh, you made me re-listen this ****, Lol

1) 15:46

Q: Britney didn't consent to this Cship, did she?

A: She didn't

2) 21:12 where he said that he was the one who adviced not to resist Сship and etc and that she was able to take his advice

 

 

00:56

Even if she took his advice, he didn't do anything with her case because he wasn't allowed to due to that medical record. He's not the real villain here if that's what we're looking for.

[DuranDuran]

9 minutes ago, Geralt_of_Rivia said:

00:56

Even if she took his advice, he didn't do anything with her case because he wasn't allowed to due to that medical record.

Seems he contradicts himself a lot. And an interesting detail from which he tries to distance himself, he gave up on Britney before there was an official medical report by Spar. It is a fact, everything is in the court documents.

 

9 minutes ago, Geralt_of_Rivia said:

He's not the real villain here if that's what we're looking for.

100% agree

[Mr. Cavill]

7 minutes ago, DuranDuran said:

Seems he contradicts himself a lot

 

100% agree

It might be taken out of context though because when he was saying in the documentary that Britney said those things it was more about that she HAD THE CAPACITY to do so. So whether she actually said it or agreed with Streisand on it does not exclude the fact that she did not approve of the conservatorship in the first place. He proposed a tactic to which she agreed -> she's got the capacity to make a judgment on this. She accepted to follow this strategy with him just so she could get what she wanted (and again that doesn't mean that suddenly she became totally okay with the conservatorship). The way I see it is like she accepted the circumstances only to find an alternative way to fight this. Unfortunately, San Ingham was put in place and she probably felt stuck and didn't bother telling him. Otherwise, we would've seen some action from Sam. Either this, or Ingham dismissed her wishes and was being unethical. Unfortunately, both theories are feasible.

And then you have Britney say "It's like they're listening but they're not really hearing what I'm trying to say". So who knows? Ugh, this is frustrating. 

[DuranDuran]

14 minutes ago, Geralt_of_Rivia said:

San Ingham was put in place and she probably felt stuck and didn't bother telling Sam Ingham. Otherwise, we would've seen some action from Sam. Either this, or Ingham dismissed her wishes and was being unethical. Unfortunately, both theories are feasible.

She tried to hire a second lawyer. Plus there were many articles from different years that she directly asked Reva Goetz to terminate the Сship, at least Cship of a person, that she is ready to take control of her life. She was denied. She also asked Penny to remove at least some restriction.  She was denied again. So the chance, that she didn't tell Ingham her wishes, is very slim. So, yeah, sadly, the second theory is more plausible in this case.

[Mr. Cavill]

3 minutes ago, DuranDuran said:

She tried to hire a second lawyer. Plus there were many articles from different years that she directly asked Reva Goetz to terminate the Сship, at least Cship of a person, that she is ready to take control of her life. She also asked Penny to remove at least some restriction . So the chance, that she didn't tell Ingham her wishes, is very slim. So, yeah, sadly, the second theory is more plausible in this case.

I wouldn't totally dismiss it given what we've got so far. And it may answer the question 'why 12 years later?' If she tried to testify in court to the judge, verbally and in person, and they always dismissed her wishes, she probably saw that her wishes don't carry any weight if done verbally. Fast-forward to 2020, when we have for the first time legally written on paper what her desires are. I wonder if that's why she hasn't shown in court in the past year or so. There could be another reason, of course. Also, aren't there supposed to be court reporters that type everything that's verbally said in court? Wouldn't that mean that there's proof if she's indeed asked the judge to remove some restriction? But what if that's sealed? Sealed or not, that medical document is most likely the key to why Britney's desires have been dismissed for such a long time; in fact, from the very beginning. 

There are details that we don't know about that could hold the answer to her case.