Poor Little Rich Girl - Britney's Fight For Freedom

The singer’s battle to get her hands on her millions

- Judy Kean

She’s 38 years old and has $90m in the bank yet can’t touch a cent of it. Her father gets to decide who she associates with and what happens to her career.

Now Britney Spears has had enough. The pop princess is fighting in the courts to have her dad Jamie Spears removed as her conservator, after he’s controlled her life for 12 years.

Jamie, 68, was put in charge of her estates and health – while lawyer Andrew Wallet was tasked with helping her to manage her finances – after a series of incidents in 2007 and 2008 in which Britney displayed worrying erratic behaviour.

She got her head shaved in front of a frenzied pack of photographers, attacked a paparazzo’s car and locked herself and her one-year-old son Jayden in a bathroom for three hours, apparently while under the influence of an “unknown substance”.

After she ended up in a psychiatric ward, steps were taken to save her career and finances.

Jamie’s conservatorship of his daughter was meant to be temporary but more than a decade later, Britney’s life is still not her own.

She’s reportedly unable to drive, have visitors or make financial decisions. She receives an undisclosed weekly allowance and everything she buys – from coffee to chewing gum – has to be written down for court records.

Conservatorships are meant to help people deemed so mentally or physically incapacitated that they cannot fend for themselves. They are usually applied to people with dementia, in comas or with severe mental disabilities.