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Lindsay Lohan will start new year out of rehab

By Alan Duke, CNN
Actress Lindsay Lohan is scheduled to finish court-ordered substance abuse rehab next week.
Actress Lindsay Lohan is scheduled to finish court-ordered substance abuse rehab next week.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Lohan leaves rehab on Tuesday, her dad says
  • The actress will move into a new home next week
  • She's been in rehab at the Betty Ford clinic for 3 months
  • If Lohan stays clean and sober until February 25, her supervised probation may end

(CNN) -- Lindsay Lohan checks out of the Betty Ford clinic Tuesday after three months of court-ordered substance abuse rehab, according to her father.

The actress voluntarily entered rehab on September 27, three days after a judge overturned another judge's decision to send her to jail for violating her probation with a failed drug test.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elden Fox later allowed her to stay in rehab instead of going to jail for the probation violation, but he set her earliest release date for January 3 to prevent her from partying on New Years Eve.

"You have to change your lifestyle," Judge Fox told the 24-year-old actress during her last court appearance in October. Otherwise, Lohan will destroy her reputation and be "unemployable and uninsurable," he warned.

Michael Lohan was busy Thursday preparing for his daughter to move into a new Los Angeles home on Tuesday. He said he was buying new closets to hold her large wardrobe.

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If Lohan violates the rules of her rehab program or fails a drug test before her next court date on February 25, she will be sent to jail for 180 days, Judge Fox told her.

Staying clean and sober until then would end Lohan's supervised probation, and she can "put this long episode behind you," Fox said.

Lohan's well publicized clash with a clinic worker earlier this month has not been counted against her.

Lohan acknowledged in a series of Twitter messages in September that she failed the test and has a drug problem.

"Substance abuse is a disease, which unfortunately doesn't go away over night," Lohan wrote. "I am working hard to overcome it and am taking positive steps."

The Beverly Hills courthouse has been the scene of several Lohan appearances over the past year related to violations of her probation for a 2007 drunken driving conviction.

In July, Judge Marsha Revel ordered the actress to serve 90 days in jail and 90 days in rehab for violating her probation.

The sheriff released her from jail after just 13 days because of overcrowding, and her rehab stint at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center ended after 23 days.

"She has learned her lesson," defense lawyer Shawn Chapman Holley told Fox as he agreed to let her out of rehab early on August 25.

Fox allowed Lohan to live in her West Hollywood, California, home as long as she followed a new set of rules, including regular drug testing. If she was successful for just 67 days, her supervised probation would end, he said.

"She's very serious about her sobriety," Holley said then. "She looks forward to proving to the court that she is taking this seriously."

But she failed a drug test less than a month later, triggering the probation violation hearing.

Lohan's legal troubles began when she was arrested twice in 2007 on charges of driving under the influence, and in the second incident, she was charged with cocaine possession.

The first arrest came after Lohan lost control of her Mercedes-Benz convertible and struck a curb in Beverly Hills, California.

Just two weeks after checking out of a Malibu, California, drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, she was arrested again in July 2007 after a woman called Santa Monica, California, police, saying Lohan was trying to run her down with a car.