Yes, ‘Free Britney’ — but also reform California’s strict conservatorship laws. Here’s how

The “Free Britney Spears” movement has brought welcome attention to California’s conservatorship system, which allows a court to designate a family member, government official or other third-party to take over a person’s financial and medical decision-making. Spears’ recent testimony paints a harrowing portrait of a person denied legal counsel, subjected to forced contraception and pushed into performing against her will.

But just freeing Britney misses the need for a broader overhaul to better protect the civil rights of some and the health of others.

As a sociologist studying California’s broken mental health system, I’ve spent the last three years interviewing dozens of parents desperate to do what Jamie Spears did: take a child in crisis and use conservatorship to stabilize them.

I’ve spoken to a mother who couldn’t get a conservatorship for a son with schizophrenia who lost 100 pounds starving himself. I talked to another whose in-patient doctor told him his son would die without a conservatorship — and then discharged him a few days later when insurance stopped paying. Parents like these are behind several bills advancing through the Legislature to make it easier to place people with psychiatric disabilities on conservatorship.

How did Spears’ father do what these families found impossible? He took advantage of California’s two-track conservatorship system, half of which is being left out of discussions for reform.

In 2008, police placed Britney Spears on a 72-hour involuntary mental health hold, the first step to getting onto a conservatorship through the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS). The act covers people whose mental illness makes them “gravely disabled.” This standard is exceedingly strict. It requires that you be unable to provide for food, clothing and shelter even after intensive treatment. In California, if you can pitch your tent outside of a roadway, you are meeting your need for shelter.

Spears certainly was above this bar during the years she was performing in Vegas.

Spears moved from LPS to the Probate Conservatorship system, typically for people with impaired decision-making capacity as a result of developmental disabilities or dementia. The evidentiary standard for a probate conservatorship is lower: “clear and convincing evidence,” versus “beyond a reasonable doubt” for an LPS conservatorship. Anyone can apply, not just a psychiatrist in a hospital. The oversight is less intense because the county mental health department is not involved.

While LPS conservatorships have to be renewed yearly, probate conservatorships are indefinite.

Current bills that seek to loosen the “grave disability” standard for mental health conservatorships might have helped Spears — and the parents I interviewed — go into a more temporary LPS guardianship geared to intensive treatment and restoring peoples’ ability to live independently. But reform needs to go further.

First, the state needs to strengthen legal representation for all potential conservatees. As the recent New York Times documentary showed, even Spears wasn’t able to get the lawyer of her choice and, perhaps as a result, wasn’t aware she needed to petition the court to end her conservatorship.

Indigent conservatees are usually represented by public defenders who have, as one told me, “absolutely zero” prior training in such cases. California should establish a body modeled on New York’s Mental Hygiene Legal Services to guarantee specialized representation.

Second, the state needs to strengthen the mandate to consider alternatives to conservatorship. In my research, I found that as many as three-fourths of LPS conservatees do not contest their conservatorship. It’s hard to know whether people consent to conservatorship because they actually accept curtailing their rights or because they know they need help. In such cases, courts should have a strong mandate to consider less-restrictive Psychiatric Advance Directives or Shared Decision-Making frameworks.

The most important alternative for many non-celebrity conservatees would be a robust system of voluntary mental health services and supported housing.

Finally, reforms to conservatorship should strengthen independent oversight. State government used to have an office monitoring conservatorship, but it closed in 2012. Now we don’t even have reliable data on how many people are conserved, for how long and with what results.

Conservatees need another layer of protection. Multiple judges and conservators I spoke to were bewildered at how the court investigator in Spears’ case determined she lacked capacity. Probate investigations should be conducted by the county Public Guardian, an independent agency which already handles LPS cases. A better-funded Public Guardian’s office could also proactively seek conservatorships for people for whom all other options have been tried.

The solution to Spears’ case is straightforward: extend the same legal safeguards that exist for LPS conservatees to the Probate system to prevent abuse. But broader reform is needed to ensure that the system protects the health and rights of the thousands of extremely vulnerable Californians who don’t have a movement protesting for them.