LOS ANGELES — Actor Amanda Bynes was released Tuesday from a court conservatorship that put her life and financial decisions in her parents’ control for nearly nine years.
Ventura County Superior Court Judge Roger Lund ended the conservatorship during a hearing at the Oxnard courtroom, according to her attorney David A. Esquibias.
“The court determines that the conservatorship is no longer required and that grounds for establishment of a conservatorship of the person no longer exist,” Lund wrote in court documents outlining the case before he issued his decision.
Bynes is now 35 and has achieved fame as a teenage star on two Nickelodeon programs. However, her struggles with substance abuse, mental health, and the law led to her parents establishing a conservatorship to control court proceedings in 2013.
Lund stated this week that Bynes demonstrated competence to handle her own affairs including mental health, as well as other treatment.
Bynes’ conservatorship played out, and came to an end, far more quietly and less contentiously than that of Britney Spears, who had a long, often bitter and public fight to free herself from a similar arrangement.
Bynes’ parents agreed that the conservatorship should end and no one else objected to the court’s decision. Lynn Bynes, her mother, was the conservator of Bynes since its establishment nearly nine-years ago.
Her parents stated to the court that they were concerned their daughter (then 27 years old) might inflict injury on herself and others.
They said Bynes had engaged in disturbing behavior, and was convinced she was being watched through smoke detectors and her car’s dashboard. They feared that she planned to perform dangerous, unnecessary cosmetic procedures.
Bynes was also arrested for throwing a pot bong from her Manhattan 36th floor apartment. She was also charged with driving under the influence and misdemeanor hit and run, as well as driving without a license. According to her parents, she set fire to the yard of Thousand Oaks home where she was born.
Bynes was 13 when she landed her own hit variety program, “The Amanda Show” on Nickelodeon and also appeared on the network’s sketch series “All That.” She went on to star in the TV series “What I Like About You” and in movies, including “What a Girl Wants,” ″Hairspray” and “She’s the Man.”
She has not acted since the 2010 Emma Stone film “Easy A” and has publicly said she retired from acting.
In interviews, Bynes stated that she had been sober for many years and that she’s currently enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Los Angeles.
Read More From Time
