Jamie Spears Has Requested That Britney Spears Be Deposed Over Her “Social Media Musings” And Her Forthcoming Memoir Days After Her Instagram Account Mysteriously Disappeared
Jamie Spears’ legal team is reportedly attempting to challenge a number of claims Britney has made against her father, including that she was “forced to give 8 tubes of blood for medical treatment” and “was not allowed to own pain-reliever meds.”
Britney Spears might be free from her conservatorship, but it seems her legal battles are far from over.
Jamie Spears — Spears' father and former conservator — has filed a request for his daughter to take part in a deposition to answer his questions under oath.
The legal docs filed by Jamie Spears' team, which were first obtained by TMZ, appear to be centered around claims Britney Spears has made, alleging that her father was abusive during her conservatorship.
To get you up to speed with all the relevant information, let’s quickly rewind back to June last year when Spears appeared in court to ask for an end to her nearly 14-year conservatorship, which gave her father and a number of lawyers control over her life and finances since 2008.
During this virtual court appearance, Spears spoke publicly for the very first time about the “abusive” terms of the agreement, comparing her experience to sex trafficking. She went on to tell the courtroom that her dad “and anyone involved in this conservatorship” should be in jail.
At the time, her father responded in a statement via his attorney, saying he was “sorry to see his daughter suffering and in so much pain.”
Three months later, a judge suspended Jamie as conservator of Britney Spears' estate, before the conservatorship was eventually terminated in November.
As you’ll likely be aware, in the time since being freed from her father’s control, Spears has posted on social media to talk to her fans in more detail about the terms of her conservatorship — often commenting on her family’s culpability behind the scenes.
Echoing her testimony last year, Spears has written in social media posts that she feels her father should face legal consequences for allegedly abusing his role as conservator. “What Dad did to me, they don’t even do to criminals. ... I’m honestly shocked Dad isn’t in jail,” she wrote on Twitter in January.
So, it is this particular aspect of Spears' social media activity that her father is now attempting to bring to the forefront by requesting that she sits down for a full deposition.
In the new legal filings, Jamie Spears' team hopes to legally challenge claims his daughter has made against him, including specific accusations that she was “forced to give 8 tubes of blood for medical treatment, was forced to participate in therapy and was not allowed to own pain-reliever meds,” TMZ reports.
However, according to Jamie Spears' lawyers, Britney Spears is trying to avoid a deposition happening.
His team also pointed to reports that Britney Spears is set to earn an estimated $15 million from her forthcoming memoir about her conservatorship — the very topic that they say she is refusing to discuss in court.
“Britney’s counsel has no legitimate legal basis to object to Britney’s deposition,” Jamie Spears' attorneys state, arguing that she “continues to make public social media posts containing incendiary allegations of various factual matters.”
They say that they have the right to depose Britney Spears, because “she is the individual making unsupported claims” against Jamie Spears.
The documents go on to state that Britney Spears' team cannot object to the deposition over concerns that the questioning may involve “emotionally difficult topics,” arguing that such matters have been addressed at length on Spears' social media pages. According to People, the documents refer to multiple of the singer’s Instagram posts within the past few months.
“She claims through her court filings and through her social media musings to know all kinds of information relating to her allegations of wrongdoing,” the filing says of Spears.
They add that she either: “(1) has the knowledge about her allegations that she professes to have in court filings and on social media; or (2) has no such knowledge or support and simply believes that she can say whatever she wants in court and on social media regardless of whether her allegations are true.”
Jamie Spears' request comes less than a month after Britney Spears' lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, filed a similar motion to compel Jamie to take part in a deposition. Just like Jamie’s lawyers, Rosengart has accused Jamie Spears of “running and hiding” from answering Britney’s questions.
It remains unclear whether either party will be deposed ahead of their scheduled court hearing on July 13. But, until then, it seems unlikely that Britney Spears will be airing any more thoughts on social media, as her Instagram account is currently nowhere to be found.
After her page mysteriously vanished from the platform without warning late last week, TMZ dug into the issue and received confirmation from a spokesperson at Instagram that the platform had no involvement in the removal of her account.
Of course, if you’ve been following Britney for a while, you’ll know that this isn’t the first time she’s taken a sudden social media detox. She last removed her Instagram account in March, before returning to the platform a couple of days later.
