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Incident

For her mental health, Britney Spearsâ€™ father in charge

05 February 2008 14:04 (UTC +04:00)

Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Reva Goetz said Jamie Spears and an attorney would keep powers of conservatorship over Spears, who was admitted to a psychiatric ward last week amid renewed fears for her mental health.
A lawyer for Spears on Monday asked Goetz to revoke an order issued on Friday granting her father control of her assets and business dealing, asking the court to instead replace Jamie Spears with Northern Trust Bank.
However the request was turned down after Goetz said she needed more information on Spears capacity to understand the proceedings and to hire her own lawyer. A further hearing has been scheduled for February 14.
In a separate development, Goetz ordered Spears manager and confidante Sam Lutfi not to have any email or telephone contact with the singer.
Lutfi has been engaged in a battle with her parents, who reportedly believe he is putting their daughterâ€™s health and assets at risk.
In another hearing on Monday, a judge postponed a court date over Spearsâ€™ attempts to regain visitation rights to her two sons, two-year-old Sean Preston and one-year-old Jayden James.
Last weekâ€™s hospital drama is the latest in a series of setbacks for Spears, who was rushed to hospital for the second time in less than a month.
In the earlier incident, the singer was wheeled out of her home following a stand-off which began when she refused to release her two children to ex-husband Kevin Federlineâ€™s bodyguard.
A judge limited Spearsâ€™ access to her children in October after she failed to submit to random drug testing as demanded at an earlier hearing where the court ruled she was a "habitual and continuous drug user."
Spears has been rarely out of the tabloid headlines since her split from Federline in late 2006.
She was repeatedly photographed out partying while wearing no underwear, bizarrely shaved her head at a public salon, and attacked a paparazziâ€™s car with an umbrella before finally entering rehab.
Spears shot to superstardom in late 1998 with her smash-hit debut album "Baby One More Time," which she followed with another chart-topping success the following year, "Oops! ... I Did It Again." /APA/