“All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and for my boyfriend to drive me in his f***ing car.” On June 23, pop icon Britney Spears detailed her experiences under a legal arrangement that granted her father control over her finances and her personal decisions. From being forced to take medication to being prevented from removing her intrauterine device (IUD), Spears’s shocking testimony has shed light on the dark underbelly of conservatorships, or guardianships. With Spears’s case, many hope that the publicity afforded to it will spark change within the guardianship system.

When Britney Spears released her debut album Baby One More Time in 1999, she was met with almost instant stardom. Thrusting the then 17-year-old singer under the spotlight, the media followed her closely for the next seven years, capturing her most vulnerable moments as her mental health crumbled. Embroiled in a fierce custody battle, Spears shaved her head, attacked a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella, and was ultimately placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold in 2008. That same year, Spears’s estranged father Jamie Spears filed for an emergency, then-temporary conservatorship which would remain in place for the next decade of her life.

Today, disability rights activists and fans are using social media to spread awareness about the guardianship, pointing out inconsistencies within the arrangement—as someone who has worked tirelessly during the conservatorship and has choreographed all of her own dances, they argue, Spears seems more than capable enough to live her own life. They are actively fighting for her freedom through the Free Britney movement, which has gained significant traction since the release of the New York Times Documentary Framing Britney Spears.

Spears and Disability Rights

In June of this year, Spears finally spoke out about the guardianship, confirming her fans’ suspicions of abuse. Prevented from taking phone calls and surveilled for 24 hours, she felt “traumatized.” While harrowing, however, Spears’s story of abuse is not new—she is one of the many adults who are stripped of self-determination and agency in conservatorships, which happens when the court gives special powers to an adult, or organization, to manage the finances for and take care of another adult. Typically reserved for those who cannot take care of themselves, conservatees are often elderly adults, those with mental illnesses, or those with intellectual disabilities.

Though rather lightly instituted and historically overused, guardianships should be regarded as a powerful intervention. As Professor Robert Dinerstein (Washington College of Law, American University) remarks, it “should not be used unless it is really needed, and even if it is needed, it should be limited through limited guardianship, where the only decisions an individual is not able to make are those that they demonstrate they cannot make.” This is because it is extremely difficult to reverse a conservatorship. More important than that, it removes decision-making authority from the person and gives it to the conservator—who acts in the person’s place—making the assumption benevolence. And conservators are not always benevolent.

Spears’s father, for one, seems to have a significant interest in keeping the pop star under the legal arrangement, raking in an impressive 2.4 million dollars as co-conservator according to Forbes. Thus, this conflict of interest has raised questions as to whether her father has her best interests at heart in the conservatorship, which the pop star herself did not realize she could petition to end until recently. This lack of awareness of her rights, according to Professor Dinerstein, is “not uncommon as the person who is influencing you unduly is the person who controls access to you.”

However, even when conservatorships work as they ideally should, they neglect an important part of life—adulthood. In this new stage of life, one makes decisions on their own for the first time, learning to deal with the consequences of their actions. With disabled adults, this should be no different. However, as Professor Dinerstein points out, guardianships often stem from the “assumptions people make out of ignorance about what they think people with disabilities actually can decide.” Furthermore, while well-meaning, they are instituted out of a paternalistic need to protect the person. Such a need disallows for the dignity of risk—the idea that individuals should be able to take reasonable risks in making their own choices.

Supported Decision-making

With so many eyes on Spears, many have shifted their focus from guardianships to explore other alternatives—namely supported decision-making. Supported decision-making is when the individual elects a circle of people whom he or she trusts to help make decisions, instead of having the court do so. The value of this arrangement lies in its informality—it is not permanent. Moreover, the person retains decision-making authority, deciding whether or not to take their supporters’ advice.

This alternative has received a huge boost from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD)—Article 12 of which calls for equal recognition of persons before the law. Conservatorships violate this article in principle, which is why the UNCRPD has encouraged nations to replace them with supported decision-making. Influenced by the international document, Korea has reformed its guardianship system.

As of 2013, limited guardianship and specific guardianship (the latter of which is when the individual only needs assistance for a specified period of time or occasion) were introduced in Korea, and the choice of guardians was extended from family members to lawyers and social workers. While the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has acknowledged these changes, it has criticized the nation for not transitioning to supported decision-making.

In this way, Korea and the United States (U.S.) seem to have their work cut out for them. Currently, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey are fighting for legislation that would require information about conservatorships, which are often cloaked in secrecy. Disability rights activists are pushing for their abolition. With the world watching as Spears passionately speaks out, her case will hopefully spark conversations at the federal level about the dangers of conservatorships. As Spears says, she—as well as any disabled person—“deserve[s] to have the same rights as anybody does, by having a child, a family…and more so.”