Brit to Lawyers: Dang, Stop Dinging Me With Fees

Britney SpearsTMZ has learned Britney Spears' conservators are ballistic over the legal bills she is being asked to pay in her custody fight -- bills totaling more than a million bucks for a five-month period.

Sources tell us the conservators have filed documents with the court and will appear on Monday, challenging lawyers' fees in the case. K-Daddy's lawyer, Mark Vincent Kaplan, has asked for around $500,000 for the five-month period from October 2007 through February 2008 and has filed papers demanding that Brit pay his bill. The court has ordered Brit to pay K-Fed's reasonable attorney's fees.

We're told Brit's last law firm, Trope and Trope, has billed her more than $600,000.

Sources say the conservators feel they're being fleeced and the bills are inflated. In particular, they're upset that multiple lawyers on Brit's side have attended various court hearings -- they say unnecessarily. The conservators will argue this is a simple custody case and bills of that magnitude are simply outrageous.



Filed under: Britney Spears

Reader Comments

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1. ..finally, Pa Spears is going to challenge the gravy train express!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted at 11:57AM on Mar 7th 2008 by it's about time!!

2. That is F'n ridiculous. They are just stealing from her because they think they can get away with it.

Posted at 11:57AM on Mar 7th 2008 by sheesh

3. Excellent

Posted at 11:58AM on Mar 7th 2008 by GOP

4. GO BRIT! i love you!!

Posted at 11:59AM on Mar 7th 2008 by Ali

5. Whore

Posted at 12:03PM on Mar 7th 2008 by Dick Weed

6.

how can you put a price on that kind of stress and continuous damage control??

whew!! won't this go away already??

harv, i like your new sign-off!

Posted at 12:04PM on Mar 7th 2008 by au naturelle

7. That's all this girl is to these low lifes.....a money machine. She has been raped by all of them.

Posted at 12:05PM on Mar 7th 2008 by JessicaRox

8. She is the reason for the numerous appearances in court so yes she should have to pay Kaplan's bill. No I don't think that almost $600,000 is fair from Trope and Trope though. They did absolutely nothing for her. The party who is causing the legal difficulties is typically stuck with the bill and in this case it's her and her behavior so making her cover the bill should resolve the issues. Though I'm curious when she's not allowed to legally care for herself how she can possibly hope to get any form of custody of her children.

Posted at 12:07PM on Mar 7th 2008 by Cara

9. THOSE LAWYERS ARE LEECHES, NONE OF THEM CARE ABOUT BRITNEY OR HER KIDS, THEY WILL MAKE MILLIONS THE LONGER THIS LASTS. AND ITS ALL KFEDS FAULT BECAUSE HE WONT LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE. ITS SICKENING THAT BRITNEY CANT BE WITH HER KIDS BECAUSE OF KFED.

Posted at 12:08PM on Mar 7th 2008 by questor

10. I hardly think this can be called a "simple custody case".

Posted at 12:09PM on Mar 7th 2008 by emme

11. Human Giant Camera Crew Gets Bea-utiful Surprise View in New York Taping Session

New York NY – March 7, 2008 – A camera crew hired by producers David Wain and Jason Wolinar as part of an undercover videotaping project being conducted out of a residential building at 38 Carmine Street in Manhattan’s famed West Village got an unexpected financial and visual bonus yesterday: candid shots of celebrity model Bea Shaffer posing nude and half-nude by her floor-length bedroom window across the alleyway.

Shaffer, the daughter of Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour and her first husband, Dr. David Shaffer, chief of child psychiatry at a local hospital, was last season’s “It Girl” on the East Coast social scene, is one of this season’s hottest new models under the age of 18. Her bedroom , located in the back of a prim five story brownstone in the Village, faces out on a courtyard accessible only to tenants and neighbors on the block. An unexpected bonus, the candid shots are expected to fetch in excess of $250,000 when sold to European celebrity magazines such in Germany, France, England and Italy.

The film crew has been staked out in the residential unit on Carmine Street for the past month as part of a self-help segment Wain and Wolinar are taping on how to use Nazi surveillance techniques to improve your love life -- for under $49 per month. On its down time, according to neighbors, the surveillance crew has been amusing itself by illegally monitoring the cellphone and e-mail transmissions of its neighbors up and down Carmine Street, which is located in an traditional old Italian neighborhood of New York’s Greenwich Village and is home to the landmark Church of Our Lady of Pompeii.

“The human body is made for expression, not suppression,” said Wain, whose landmark comedy series, “Human Giant,” debuts on MTV this coming March 11. “And so if this woman chose to express herself by standing naked next to her bedroom window in a variety of nude and semi-nude poses, who are we to ignore her chosen art form?”

Wolinar called the candid shots “an added bonus,” noting: “It’s hard out there for a pimp.”


Posted at 12:09PM on Mar 7th 2008 by Jennski from Maine

12. I'm on Team KFed, but I don't understand why Brit should be paying legal bills for Kevin's attorney. While he didn't get a great divorce settlement (not like JLo's ex, who got $15M), didn't he get about $6M from the sale of their house, not to mention the income he's made from his various acting and other gigs. He should be able to pay at least part of the bill. Legal fees of half a million dollars for Kevin's lawyer and more than that for hers, that seems a bit ridiculous, though. It's not like they're working on this case full time.

Posted at 12:14PM on Mar 7th 2008 by sillyme

13. You think maybe, just MAYBE, it has to do with all the court appointments that Britney kept blowing off. How many times was she scheduled to appear, and everyone else was there, but she was too busy using gas station restrooms, or having 'panic attacks' only to be seen later that night drivng around aimlessly, as usual.

Bitch has to pay. Let that be a lesson to her.

Posted at 12:14PM on Mar 7th 2008 by Anonymous Supporter

14. Wow, a lawyer charging an inflated price? Who would of thunk it? It is time for some serious lawyer reform, of course what judge (all former lawyers) would limit the amount a lawyer can charge?

Posted at 12:15PM on Mar 7th 2008 by Rico

15. i agree with #9. it is her fault. and #10 stop blaming kfed. i mean give me a break, when is she going to start taking on some responsibility for her actions?

Posted at 12:15PM on Mar 7th 2008 by hi

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