Britney’s Break-Up With Timberlake Started Her Woes, Lawyer Claims

Let’s just hope nobody told Britney Spears about Justin Timblerlake’s big news today.

An attorney for the Spears family told court officials today that Britney was quite happy until 10 years ago, when Timberlake not only dumped her, but trashed her reputation. Attorney Leon Gladstone said the breakup left Britney depressed and angry and led to the downward spiral that turned into the trainwreck that became her life.

She married a childhood friend Jason Alexander in Las Vegas and divorced him just 55 hours later, started using drugs and eventually turned in the head-shaving, crotch-flashing tabloid queen we all grew to love and laugh at over the years.

Gladstone Friday made his opening statement in the defamation and breach-of-contract case brought against Britney and her parents by her ex-manager Sam Lutfi, who has already made some ugly allegations, including saying Britney shaved her head to avoid failing a crystal meth test and losing her children.

But Britney was fine before her relationship with Timberlake “ended painfully,” Gladstone said, after which Britney’s parents, Jamie and Lynne Spears, noticed a change in the young star.

This is a story of a close family, but not a perfect one. It’s a story of a man who actually wanted nothing more for his daughter than to live and be well. It’s a story of a father who has had to step up and take action that he never thought he would have to take….actions that didn’t perhaps endear his daughter to him.

Jamie Spears eventually had to force Britney into rehab, take her children away and establish a conservatorship for her after she was put in the hospital twice for psychiatric issues.

And when Jamie and Lynne Spears got a three-year restraining order against Lufti, who they accused of manipulating Britney and arranging for paparazzi to always be around at her lowest moments, he ended up suing them.

But Britney was about to get worse. She married backup dancer Kevin Federline and had her two children, but after she filed for divorce, it “was actually the beginning of the worst period of Britney’s life.”

As if breaking up with Timberlake wasn’t bad enough! But this time around was when she started using drugs and shaved her head, Gladstone said.

She was in and out of rehab, and Federline went for full custody of their boys.

Meanwhile, Britney is going from bad to worse. She is at Rite Aid at 2 a.m. surrounded by paparazzi, and we have now heard these were arranged in advance as photo ops.

But if breaking up with Justin Timberlake, who admittedly was a douchebag at the time and told the press how he’d taken the teen princess’ virginity, was what started all this, can you imagine what she thought today when the news came out?

Granted, though, she’s in a much better place now than then. She’s engaged to another former manager, Jason Trawick, and she’s a judge on the “XFactor.”

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, she’s a red-hot babe again, even after all that: