After Jamie Spears announced plans to step down, is Britney Spears actually free?

"I’ve told the whole world I’m okay, and I’m happy. It’s a lie. I thought, just maybe if I said that enough, I might become happy, because I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatised."

Britney Spears’ haunting testimony in June finally confirmed what many fans had suspected for years: Britney wanted out of her conservatorship, and out from under her father’s control.

This is why the news that her father, Jamie Spears, is agreeing to step down after 13 years has delighted and excited fans and famous friends online.

In her blistering statement, Spears finally spoke out explicitly against her father, and the conservatorship she has been under since 2008. ‘Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, my dad was all for [the conservatorship],’ she said. ‘He loved the control he had over me, one hundred thousand percent.’

A riposte by Jamie Spears’s lawyer, Vivian Thoreen, said simply, ‘Mr Spears is the unremitting target of unjustified attacks, he does not believe that a public battle with his daughter over his continuing service as her conservator would be in her best interests.’

#FreeBritney: what happens next? 

Despite celebrations online, the #FreeBritney fight will continue for some time.

Jamie Spears, 69, who has been paying himself $16,000 a month since 2008 to manage his daughter's multimillion dollar fortune, announced that he would stepping down, but only providing Judge Brenda Penny asked him to and if there was a plan in place for Britney's care.

In the court documents, obtained by TMZ, his lawyers write: 'There are, in fact, no actual grounds for suspending or removing Mr. Spears as the Conservator of the Estate...and it is highly debatable whether a change in conservator at this time would be in Ms. Spears' best interests.

'Nevertheless, even as Mr. Spears is the unremitting target of unjustified attacks, he does not believe that a public battle with his daughter over his continuing service as her conservator would be in her best interests.'

When, and if, Jamie does eventually step down, Britney’s conservatorship would continue to be in place, just under a new conservator.

It’s not yet known if a judge will decide to end Britney’s conservatorship altogether but Britney’s fans will continue to stand by their pop princess.