Wendy Williiams has amped up her demands to be free of a restrictive guardianship by hiring new lawyers to free her from the clutches of her luxury prison.
via: Page Six
The Post has learned Williams, 60, has received permission — rare for someone under the purview of a legal guardian — to hire new lawyers to help her stalled case.
For almost three years, Williams has been locked into a guardianship she says she doesn’t need — and has said she doesn’t like her guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, who wields considerable power in the tightly-sealed world of judges and conservatorships in New York City.
Williams’ life went downhill in 2021 after she divorced her philandering husband Kevin Hunter — who fathered a baby with another woman — and walked away from her longtime talk show.
She was placed in a guardianship in 2022 by a New York judge at a court proceeding sparked by Williams’ bank, Wells Fargo, who had put a freeze on her accounts due to suspicious activity and sent a letter to court recommending a guardianship to prevent her from “undue influence and financial exploitation.” Morrissey was then appointed by the court.
The 2024 documentary, “Where is Wendy Williams?” aired on Lifetime last year and showed Williams at her worst, often sneaking bottles of vodka, leaving her drunk and disheveled.
She currently lives on a locked ward at The Coterie assisted living facility at Hudson Yards. Sources close to Williams say she has only a fixed phone line to use, which is why she can’t get incoming calls.
She has “no electronics whatsoever,” which means she cannot have a smartphone, tablet or laptop.
“They say she’s incapacitated. That usually means someone who is a vegetable or unaware of their surroundings and unable to communicate,” said Ginalisa Monterroso, the CEO and founder of Connect Care Advisory Group. She began working with Williams in December with the encouragement of their mutual friend, Charlamagne Tha God.
“That’s not Wendy. Even just look at her operate her scooter. Can an incapacitated person do that?”
“I would not be advocating publicly on behalf of Wendy if I felt she had any cognitive issues or that she belonged in a memory unit,” Monterroso said.
For now, if she doesn’t get a new legal team, Wendy faces no future other than sitting in her room alone every day.
“She’s just stuck in what she calls a luxury prison … There’s been no plan put in place for her, no paperwork, no hearings. There was no strategy or help lined up for her at all,” added Monterroso.
Monterroso, who has 25 years in the elder care field, said she now speaks to Williams almost every day and had a long lunch with her last week.
Monterroso also wrote a letter on Williams’ behalf to Adult Protective Services in New York, she said.
Both Monterroso and a source familiar with the guardianship have told The Post a new neurological exam will be scheduled for Williams, probably sometime within the next two months.
Both people, who don’t know each other, said they believe the new exam was ordered because of all the noise Williams has been making about her situation in the last few weeks.
Monterroso, like many others in Williams’ circle, believe Williams’ cogitive issues were caused by alcohol-induced dementia — which is some cases can be reversible, at least in part.
“A doctor in Florida first examined her in 2019 and his diagnosis was alcohol-related dementia,” Monterroso said, but noted there could be other issues.
“She’s also had serious thyroid issues since her 30s and there’s such a thing as thyroid-related dementia. She also has Graves disease which is why her eyes sometimes bulge.
“Whatever it is, a guardianship is supposed to be for someone who doesn’t know to put on a coat in winter or doesn’t remember to pay bills or wanders out and doesn’t know where they are. That’s not Wendy. So then why put an alcoholic in a memory care unit and throw away the key?”
Monterroso said Williams is aware of her alcohol problem and says she does not want to drink again and wants to fight for her sobriety if she gets out of her guardianship.
One expert in guardianships and conservatorships believes she has a good chance of doing so with the right pitbull litigators.
“Wendy Williams clearly doesn’t have aphasia,” Diane Dimond, author of “We’re Here to Help: When Guardianship Goes Wrong,” told The Post. “If she gets a good litigation team in place she stands a very good chance of following in Britney Spears’ footsteps and getting out from under this guardianship.
“You want litigators, not elder care lawyers. That’s what I tell everyone. You go in on a civil rights issue. There’s a growing problem of people winding up in these situations but thankfully there’s sometimes a way out.”
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