Conservatorship explained: A look at the concept of legal conservatorship and the famous case of Britney Spears. Video / Getty
To the "Free Britney" activists who crowd outside courtrooms with whistles and placards, it came as a vindication.
In a court filing on Thursday, Jamie Parnell Spears, 69, agreed to step down "when the time is right" from his increasingly controversial role as conservator for his daughter Britney, the blonde-haired pop icon who dominated the charts for much of the early 2000s.
Spears "does not believe that a public battle with his daughter over his continuing service as her conservator would be in her best interests", according to a long-awaited statement from his lawyers.
Britney Spears speaks during the grand opening of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation Britney Spears Campus on November 4, 2017 in Las Vegas. Photo / Getty Images
The announcement doesn't – yet – mean Britney Spears is free; merely that her father will hand over the reins of the conservatorship to somebody else.
Nevertheless, it marks a major step in the pop singer's remarkable public battle to free herself from the grip of her father, which began in 2007 when Jamie Spears was awarded effective control over much of Britney's life – including financial decisions related to her $60 million ($85 million) fortune – after her agonisingly public psychological breakdown.
He used a controversial Californian legal procedure known as conservatorship, in which a judge decides a person is mentally incapable of controlling their finances.
Most individuals placed under conservatorship are elderly, or seriously mentally ill (the UK equivalent is known as a deputyship) and never escape.
But in recent years Spears' control over his daughter has come under criticism – most notably from Britney herself, who argues with vigour that she is now well enough to make her own decisions.
In June of this year, in an angry 23-minute speech delivered to a Los Angeles courtroom, the 39-year-old described a hellish-sounding existence, with zero privacy, in which her every deed is monitored.
She claimed that was forced to use a contraceptive device, forbidden to marry and forced to take the mood-stabilising drug lithium, which left her feeling drunk.
Mr Spears has not yet addressed each claim specifically, but on Thursday his lawyer rebuffed "false allegations" they claim have been circulating about the case.
"[Jamie] loves his daughter and only wants the best for her. Many of her characterisations or memories are just incorrect," his lawyer said.
Britney Spears' father, Jamie, has controlled her finances and personal life for years. Photo / Supplied
In Hollywood tabloids, Spears snr has been cast as the archetypal, controlling villain – an absent father for much of his daughter's life who charged in when it became financially fruitful, locking her away while forcing her to perform, like a circus owner in a Gothic novel.
Mr Spears has earned $16,000 ($22,000) per month for his role as conservator, plus significant percentages of the millions his daughter makes from touring and merchandise.
But some of those who know the family argue the reality is more complicated.
Mr Spears started with admirable intentions, they say, following the path that any responsible father would take when his daughter was in the midst of a genuinely dangerous crisis.
The world watched in 2007 as Britney stormed into a Los Angeles salon and shaved her iconic blonde hair; and, a few weeks later, as she attacked a photographer with an umbrella. She entered rehab and lost custody of her two sons to her second husband, Kevin Federline.
"[The conservatorship] was probably the right thing to do at the time, because she was not in a good place, her mental health was destroyed," says a music industry source who has known Britney since she was 18. "[But] it's gone on too long."
Others say that Spears snr's actions cannot be understood without reference to his own childhood, in which he saw his own family fall apart amid tragedy.
As a teenager, he was a star quarterback in Kentwood, Louisiana, a tiny southern town that wouldn't feel out of place in Huckleberry Finn, where residents have to look out for rattlesnakes in the grass. His father, a boilermaker, was "hard on him", according to Mr Spears' former football coach, who spoke to the New York Times.
When Spears was 13, his mother killed herself on the grave of her infant son. Four years later, Spears survived a car crash that killed his friend. At 22, he was arrested on drug and drunk driving charges.
It was a "very difficult upbringing" that undoubtedly shaped Spears' perspective, according to his first wife, Debbie Sanders Cross, who remains his friend.
"I really think that's why he's trying to be so protective of Britney," she told the New York Times in June.
In 1976 Spears married Lynne, his second wife and Britney's mother, but she filed for divorce in 1980, requesting a temporary restraining order from Spears, claiming he would "become angry when he is served with these papers … especially if he has been drinking alcoholic beverages, as he has done in the past". The couple ultimately called off the divorce, and Britney was born a year later, the middle child of three.
Britney Spears fans rally for the pop star at the Utah State Capitol. Photo / AP
But they soon fell into financial difficulty and filed for bankruptcy in 1998, a year before 16-year-old Britney's career took off with the release of her debut album, Baby One More Time.
The couple divorced four years later – "the best thing that ever happened to our family", wrote Lynne in her 2008 memoir, in which she described a marriage punctuated by "verbal abuse, abandonment" and "erratic behaviour".
The bitter war of words between Britney and her father has shocked fans.
But in the bizarre world of pop, it is not uncommon for young women to be controlled by older men who stand to profit from their image.
"It's definitely not unheard of for fathers or men in a position of authority to take this kind of controlling, commanding interest over women's careers," says Sarah Ditum, a self-confessed Britney "super-fan" whose upcoming book, Upskirt Decade, looks at the treatment of Spears and other female stars in the 2000s.
"You can look back to [American record producer and convicted murderer] Phil Spector. Women in the Wall of Sound empire have talked about the way that he controlled them and treated them essentially as property."
Britney Spears pictured with her mother Lynne in 2002. Photo / Getty Images
In the UK, Britney's fallout with her father has raised comparisons with the tragic case of Amy Winehouse. In his newly published memoir, My Amy, Winehouse's close childhood friend Tyler James describes a recurring tension between Amy and her father, Mitch, an East End taxi driver.
"Amy loved her dad and he loved her, but I felt his love of the fame, glitz and glamour had a detrimental effect on her," James writes. "He loved all the attention that came with Amy's success – but she hated it."
The pair reconciled before Winehouse's untimely death in 2011 – something that looks less certain in the case of Britney and her father. Mr Spears appears to have moved back to Kentwood, where he has recently sold the home in which Britney grew up.
He now stays in a house on a winding country road, near the edge of town, and sometimes hosts crawfish boils, a Deep South delicacy.
Mr Spears has indicated in the past that he is open to a future rapprochement.
"Britney knows that her Daddy loves her, and that he will be there for her whenever and if she needs him, just as he always has been – conservatorship or not," his lawyer wrote this year.
