Britney Spears apparently couldn't decide if it was better late or never. In the end, neither worked in her favor.
A court commissioner ruled Wednesday that he would not lift the suspension of Spears' visitation rights for her children with Kevin Federline after Spears went MIA during an emergency hearing held at her own behest.
The proceedings themselves got off to a less than promising start for Spears, who arrived nearly 25 minutes tardy to Los Angeles County Superior Court. A half hour later, after going through the security checkpoint, Spears informed sheriff's deputies she wanted to leave the premises and split without even entering the courtroom.
While court spokesperson Allan Parachini originally said Spears was expected to return to the courthouse later today, that now seems unlikely.
"Any future proceeding would have to include counsel for both sides," he said outside court. "Many of you saw how this went down. This was an unusual situation. Our primary concern here is the children."
Inside the courtroom, Spears' bolting appeared to take even her attorney, Anne Kiley, by surprise. Asked by Court Commissioner Scott M. Gordon if her client was going to be present for the hearing, Kiley responded, "I don't know."
"I don't want to delay the hearing," she added.
The hearing had originally been slated to begin at 8:30 a.m. Spears managed to appear at the courthouse free of her usual fanfare by entering via a basement parking garage. (A source said earlier she would be chauffeured to the downtown complex accompanied by manager pal Sam Lutfi.)
"When you're trying to convince a judge that previous orders are not necessary, the court has to have the opportunity to observe, to hear from and to assess the demeanor of the person," Federline attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan said outside court.
"I'm here personally ready to go whether the other party appears or not."
Federline, 29, was also present for the hearing, having arrived on time with Kaplan. Spears' former mister was sworn in just prior to the media being cleared from the courtroom, though Parachini was hesitant to confirm that the "America's Most Hated" rapper testified during the quickie hearing.
"It depends on what you call testimony," he said of Federline's participation in the courtroom. "A couple of questions were posed to Mr. Federline, sitting at a counsel table, and he responded very briefly—as in one or two words—to the questions he was asked."
As a Spears source told E! News Tuesday, the "Gimme More" singer initially planned to ask Gordon to restore her visitation rights for sons Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1. Gordon stripped her of monitored visits on Jan. 4, the morning after her forced hospitalization and hours-long custody standoff with police, in which she refused to hand over her children to Federline's bodyguard.
Spears, 26, has not seen or been in contact with her children since the incident. She was expected to spend supervised quality time with her kids in a "therapeutic setting," i.e., under the watchful eyes of medical professionals.
Kaplan said after court on Wednesday that he is not yet comfortable with that proposal.
The hearing comes in the wake of Spears' appearance at Kaplan's office for a deposition Monday. After skipping several appointments outright, she finally submitted to about 40 minutes of questioning and is scheduled to return for more in the coming days.
Kaplan has said that while he only managed to ask her a fraction of his questions, the session went better than on Jan. 3—the day of her standoff—which lasted just 14 minutes.
Her newfound compliance, however, was apparently short-lived.
Barring any more emergency hearings, attorneys for both Federline and Spears are due back in court Feb. 4, the previously announced date for the next scheduled hearing in their custody battle.
In other Spears-related developments Wednesday, Kiley and her law firm, Trope and Trope, withdrew a pending motion asking Gordeon to allow them to quit as the singer's counsel.
(Originally published Jan. 22, 2008 at 9:07 a.m. PT.)