Spears was to be released from UCLA Medical Centre's psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles today, but doctors and a medical officer at the ward determined that she should remain, someone close to the pop star told The Associated Press, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter.
Spears was committed on Thursday for a 72-hour hold for evaluation.
Paramedics, flanked by a police escort of about a dozen officers on motorcycles, in cars and a helicopter, took Spears from her home to the psychiatric hospital before dawn.
In extending her hospital stay, hospital staff members cited a section in the California legal code that allows patients to be retained for medical treatment if they are found to be gravely disabled or a danger to themselves or others, the person said.
Court Commissioner Reva Goetz ruled the day after Spears was hospitalised - and following a year of increasingly bizarre public behaviour - that someone should take over the singer's personal and financial affairs.
She named Spears' father, James Spears, as his daughter's conservator and made Spears' father and lawyer Andrew Wallet conservators of the pop star's estate.
Goetz granted the conservator access to all Spears' medical records, as well as the right to restrict her visitors and to provide her with around-the-clock security.
A court creates a conservatorship when it concludes a person no longer can care for themselves or their personal and financial affairs.
Goetz also issued a restraining order, keeping Sam Lutfi, the pop star's friend and sometime manager, away from her.
She ordered a hearing tomorrow to review the matter.
Spears' current hospitalisation is the second this year for the 26-year-old singer, who has been in spiral of bizarre behaviour since November 2006, when she filed for divorce from Kevin Federline, the father of her sons, one-year-old Jayden James and two-year-old Sean Preston.
Since her breakup with Federline, Spears has been seen at public events in short skirts and without underwear, has shaved her head bald, run over a photographer's foot with her car, left the scene of a fender bender, flogged another car with an umbrella and abandoned a car in traffic when it had a flat tyre.
Recently, she was seen sitting on a footpath, holding her pet dog and rying.
Spears was hospitalised on January 3 after police were called to her home when she refused to return her children to Federline following a visit. That episode resulted in her losing custody of her sons.
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