But what about the rights of Mister Britney Spears?

I am one of those dirty old men who is fascinated with Britney Spears.  (Daniel Drezner appears to be another.)  And somehow I find it touching, even endearing, that Britney decided during a New Year's celebratory revelry in Las Vegas to wed a boy of her own age from her hometown, and even poignant that she quickly relented to obtain not a divorce, but an annulment.  (Her initial decision may have been influenced by more than holiday good spirits: compare her signature on the application for the wedding license, reportedly obtained in the wee small hours, with her signature on the annulment application.)

One must marvel at the efficiency of the Las Vegas family court:   her application, filed at 10:12 o'clock a.m. on January 5, 2004, had been granted by written order filed at 12:24 o'clock p.m. on that same day.  This was no doubt facilitated by the approval of her short-time spouse, whose signature appears on the Decree of Annulment.  Yet his signature is as the "Defendant in Proper Person," which is to say, pro se and without the appearance or representation of separate counsel.  (Ms. Spears' attorneys, who also signed off on the decree, quite properly are identified as representing only her.)

Which leads one to wonder (at least if one is both dirty old man and lawyer): between January 3rd and 5th, did Ms. Spears really have no income?  Do none of her recording deals compensate her on the basis of records sold per day?  Does she get no advertising endorsement fees based on the play of her Pepsi commercials? 

Nevada, where the couple was married, and Louisiana, where they both purport to reside, are both community property states.  Absent a pre-nup to the contrary, her income during the marriage, if any, presumptively became community property.  The application for annulment alleges that "Plaintiff Spears is not currently pregnant," which the groom presumably may be in a position to know something about without professional assistance.  But what about the assertion that "there is no community property to be divided by the Court"?  Is that really true, and was the unrepresented groom adequately assured of that proposition?

I ask these questions with tongue planted firmly in cheek, if you can't tell.  Just as I'm touched that her impulsive act was with a hometown boy rather than some other media star, I'm willing to assume — and I want to believe — that the young man in question wasn't after two days of her superstar income, but genuinely just wanted to make her happy.  I'll grant them both credit for the maturity needed to bail out promptly and with as little fanfare as possible.  And if I had the chance, I'd buy the young man and myself a pair of cold beers to cry into while I told him about my own divorce, which took something longer than two-and-a-quarter hours.