After a protracted legal battle, Jamie Spears filed a petition on Tuesday to formally bring his daughter Britney Spears’s conservatorship to a close. This is a huge win for the pop star, who has expressed her desire for the arrangement to end and repeatedly asked for her father to be removed from his court-appointed position managing her estate. And according to her lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, this is only the beginning of a larger investigation into how his client’s finances have been managed by her father over the last 13 years.

“This filing represents a massive legal victory for Britney Spears, as well as vindication,” Rosengart told Vanity Fair in a statement. “Having exposed his misconduct and improper plan to hold his daughter hostage by trying to extract a multimillion-dollar settlement, Mr. Spears has now effectively surrendered. There is no settlement.” He added, “To the extent Mr. Spears believes he can try to avoid accountability and justice, including sitting for a sworn deposition and answering other discovery under oath, he is incorrect and our investigation into financial mismanagement and other issues will continue.” (Vanity Fair has reached out to Jamie’s representative for comment.)

Last week Rosengart filed court documents requesting the immediate suspension of Spears’s father at the next conservatorship hearing scheduled for September 29, as well as addressing a number of Jamie’s prior demands. In court documents filed on August 12, 2021, in response to Rosengart’s original request for his suspension, Jamie said he would be “willing to step down when the time is right” as long as there was an “orderly” transition of power and “a resolution of matters pending before the Court.” His voluntary resignation would also be contingent upon the estate’s approval of payment for various expenses accrued over the year—a request Rosengart quickly rejected. “Britney Spears will not be bullied or extorted by her father,” the lawyer responded in a statement to People. “Nor does Mr. Spears have the right to try to hold his daughter hostage by setting the terms of his removal. This is not about him, it is about the best interests of his daughter, which, as a matter of law, mandate his removal. Even putting aside the legal issues requiring his prompt removal, if he loves his daughter, Mr. Spears should resign now, today, before he is suspended. It would be the correct and decent thing to do.”

But Jamie’s lawyer, Vivian Lee Thoreen, previously argued that it was precisely that love for his daughter that kept Jamie in his position as her conservator. Thoreen claimed that Jamie’s “sole motivation” was “his unconditional love for his daughter and a fierce desire to protect her from those trying to take advantage of her.” But a source told Vanity Fair that Jamie’s sudden change of heart this week regarding the singer’s conservatorship had less to do with paternal affection and more to do with inevitability. They explained, “He saw the handwriting on the wall and was forced by [Britney’s] last court filing of August 30 to take this step,” before the court made the decision for him.

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