Amanda Bynes ‘excited’ ahead of hearing to terminate conservatorship, says attorney
Actor was placed under conservatorship in 2013 following mental health and substance abuse problems
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Your support makes all the difference.Amanda Bynes is “excited” ahead of Tuesday’s (22 March) hearing when a judge is expected to terminate the conservatorship she was placed under in 2013.
On Monday (21 March), judge Roger L Lund of Ventura County Superior Court in California noted that Bynes, 35, is able to take back control of her personal and professional matters after the actor filed a petition last month to end her conservatorship.
“The court determines that the conservatorship is no longer required and that grounds for establishment of a conservatorship of the person no longer exist,” Judge Lund wrote on Monday in a tentative ruling, a copy of which was obtained by The Wrap.
The She’s The Man star was first detained in July 2013 after she allegedly started a small fire in a stranger’s driveway. She was hospitalised for 72 hours, during which her parents filed for conservatorship.
The conservatorship has been continued a number of times since, most recently in September 2021 for another two years, at the request of Bynes’s conservator and mother Lynn.
Bynes’s lawyer David A Esquibias said that his client is “excited” after Judge Lund’s ruling.
“We’re all excited and we’re all anxiously looking forward to Amanda living a life as a private and normal citizen,” he told Variety.
After she filed a capacity declaration – an assessment of a conservatee’s mental health state required in state conservatorship cases – in court on 22 February, Bynes submitted legal documents requesting the termination of the conservatorship of both her person and estate on 25 February.
At the time, Esquibias said: “Amanda wishes to terminate her conservatorship. She believes her condition is improved and protection of the court is no longer necessary.”
In 2018, the actor said that she had been sober for four years with the help of her parents.
Speaking to Paper, she said: “I’m really ashamed and embarrassed with the things I said. I can’t turn back time but if I could, I would.”
Bynes began her career as a child actor on kids’ channel Nickelodeon, where she starred in her own series The Amanda Show from 1999 to 2002.
She went on to star in a number of high-profile teen movies, including Big Fat Liar, What A Girl Wants, Sidney White and Easy A.
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