In the first episode of the four-part documentary, Where is Wendy Williams?, which aired on Lifetime Feb. 24 and 25, the former daytime talk show host makes a haunting observation about the state of her financial affairs.
“I have no money and I’m going to tell you something,” Wendy Williams states to the cameras, “if it happens to me, it could happen to you.”
According to journalist Diane Dimond, author of We’re Here to Help: When Guardianship Goes Wrong, who’s featured in the documentary, Williams is right. “It’s not just Wendy Williams and Britney Spears, there are 2 million people in guardianship or conservatorship right now in this country,” Dimond tells THR. “In the justice system, if somebody says you’re at risk and vulnerable and need protection, the court says, ‘OK.’ There’s no due process in these courtrooms.”
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Williams came under financial guardianship in May 2022 after Wells Fargo petitioned the courts, claiming the radio and TV personality was an “incapacitated person” and the “victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.” The accusation, her son, Kevin Hunter Jr. claims in part two of the doc, stems from purchases he made while his mother was in his family’s care in Miami, Florida, from the fall of 2021 until she was forced to return to New York for court proceedings regarding guardianship the following spring.
“My mom made me power of attorney because at that time the banks started accusing the family of doing things that weren’t true, and saying that my mom wasn’t fit to make choices,” he says in the film. “The court tried to frame it as though I was making all these charges for my own happiness.”
Willliams’ guardian, who has been publicly revealed as attorney Sabrina Morrissey, failed to reply to THR‘s requests for comment. When contacted, Wells Fargo sent the following statement: “This matter was conducted under seal. Any claims against Wells Fargo have been dismissed.”
“Anybody in the world can hire a lawyer to write up a petition for guardianship,” says Dimond, speaking to THR following the release of the documentary. “It can be your mad next-door neighbor or a former business partner who hates your guts. It could be a family member or your landlord. I have found owners of lots of buildings here in New York that filed for guardianship over people to get them out of their apartment. Banks, financial institutions, even hospitals.”
She continues, “Guardianships happen in a lot of ways, and some are good. If you’re worried about your dementia-diagnosed mother and you say, ‘I want to have power of attorney and help her and pay her bills,’ and you go to the court and you’re named guardian, it works out just fine. But I’ve investigated this for eight years now, and I’m telling you, more and more, judges overlook the family. They just ignore them.”
In part four of the documentary, Williams’ sister Wanda suggests this is what happened to her family. “I was asked, would I consider being a guardian? And I said, ‘I don’t know what being a guardian involves,’” she tells producers. “I was told that it involved taking some kind of class, and I said, ‘Yeah I’ll do it.’ I said, ‘Whatever I gotta do, I’ll be focused on Wendy’s health.’ And then, all of a sudden, the wall came down and there was nothing.”
Though in the documentary he stresses the court has a strong preference for issuing guardianship to family members, lawyer Bernard A. Krooks, founding partner of Littman Krooks LLP and chair of its Elder Law and Special Needs Department, says he’s witnessed similar trends as Dimond.
“I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years, and I would say that what I’m seeing in my practice is more fighting amongst siblings and family members, which has led to courts giving guardianship more to independent entities or entities that they believe are independent, like banks or other financial institutions,” he tells THR.
According to nycourts.gov, in a case involving guardianship of an incapacitated person, also known as an Article 81 case, a judge can determine a person is incapacitated if they are (1)”unable to care for their own property and/or personal needs,” and (2) “likely to suffer harm because they cannot understand the consequences of not being able to care for their property and/or personal needs.”
A judge can then appoint an Article 81 guardian to help a person manage either their personal or property needs or both. Noting this individual is typically a family member, the website states if no family member is willing or able to take on guardianship, the court can either appoint a previously trained person or a social service agency to take on the responsibility. According to the website, examples of personal needs include making health care decisions, deciding where the person should live, applying for government or private benefits on behalf of the person, and accessing confidential records.
Examples of property management needs include paying bills, organizing personal assets, entering into contracts and making gifts on behalf of the person.
“New York is unique in this regard because we don’t default to a full or plenary guardianship like other states do, where you lose all of your rights. In New York, the law says the guardianship is supposed to be the least restrictive form of intervention,” says Krooks, who notes the burden of proof for the necessity of guardianship rests with the person making the petition.
“If you can do certain things, then it’s supposed to be specifically tailored to carve out the tasks that you can still do on your own, and just give the guardian the powers to do the things that you can’t. More times than not, the judges probably give the guardian too many powers because they make the mistake that many of us make, which is that if somebody can’t do A and B, they also can’t do C, and that’s not necessarily true.”
Because Williams’ court documents are sealed, it’s not known to the public which form of guardianship she’s under. But based on the family’s depiction of their limited access to her and a statement from her manager William Shelby in the documentary that “Everything with Wendy is a court decision,” Dimond suspects she’s under plenary guardianship, which, according to the American Bar Association, gives the guardian “the power to exercise all legal rights and duties for the ward.”
“When you become a ward of the court, you’re stripped of your civil rights and all your assets,” says Dimond. She adds that if Williams is in fact under plenary guardianship, “She can’t decide where she’s going to live or what doctors she sees. She can’t spend her money, she can’t vote, she can’t drive, she can’t get married, she can’t sign a contract, she can’t go on vacation or go shopping. She has no constitutionally protected rights anymore, which to me makes this the most under-discussed civil rights issue of our time.”
On Feb. 22, two days prior to the documentary’s release, Williams’ team put out a statement saying she’d been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia. Williams’ son, in the documentary, says he was told in the fall of 2021 that Williams condition is alcohol-induced dementia and that doctors explained, “because she was drinking so much it was starting to affect her headspace and her brain.” Mark Ford, producer for Where Is Wendy Williams?, has since told THR, “If we had known that Wendy had dementia going into it, no one would’ve rolled a camera.”
Though both disorders would demonstrate Williams’ cognition is compromised, the diagnoses don’t necessarily mean she’s lost all cognitive ability to the point that her rights should be completely restricted, says Krooks. “People with Alzheimer’s or dementia may have short-term memory loss, but they can still do other things. I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions on that.”
In placing Williams under guardianship nearly two years ago, the court may have already done that. As Dimond points out, “Once you’re in the system, they may call it temporary, but guardianships and conservatorships turn permanent 98 percent of the time.”
Spears’ case is one of the most well-known that has been reversed. On Nov. 10, 2021, a judge terminated the singer’s 13-year conservatorship five months after she provided video testimony stating claims of abuse and a desire for it to come to an end. Thus far, the Williams family hasn’t revealed plans to pursue legal action to place Williams under their care. Therefore, “Whether or not that could happen here, I don’t know,” says Krooks.
“I have been involved in cases, but it is rare, where someone had a guardian appointed for them and then they were able to get the guardianship removed. It doesn’t happen very often and it’s very difficult to do. A lot of it depends upon the circumstances under which they were determined to need a guardianship, but there are supposed to be protections in place if you’re the personal needs guardian,” he explains. “You’re supposed to visit the person, make the decisions regarding the medical care, and if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, then other people interested in the case, including the family, can hire lawyers or do it on their own and file paperwork with the court alleging the bad acts of the guardian and try to have the guardian removed.”
Ford recently told THR about the family not yet contesting the guardianship, “It’s difficult to contest a guardianship. All of the proceedings are masked, so they can’t even pull the paperwork to see why they were excluded or not allowed to be the guardians to begin with. So, because of the shadowy way in which the courts protect these guardianships, it’s very difficult for them to gather the information. Also, this is not a rich family that has a ton of resources.”
In the statement released by Williams’ team, they claim her diagnosis “has enabled Wendy to receive the medical care she requires,” but the loose oversight of guardians makes it hard to know for sure whether that’s so.
“These are state-run systems. There are no federal laws governing this at all,” says Dimond. “It’s up to individual states and their laws are vague. They say things like, ‘The guardians should file an accounting every year. The judge may ask for an audit every two years,’” she explains.
The final title card for the docuseries states, per New York State Mental Hygiene Law, Article 81.31, the court must conduct a review of Williams’ guardianship every year.
On March 30, 2023, the Senate held a hearing on guardianship to allow victims, mostly family members, to share their testimonies regarding guardianship of their loved ones, but change has yet to take place.
“They keep having hearings and then they say, ‘Well, it’s a state’s issue.’ I call bullshit because they can go into state police departments if there’s a civil rights violation allegation and lay out the problem and what they have to do to fix it, why don’t they do that for guardianship?” asks Dimond. “They can, but they don’t. The lobbyists are way too strong.
“That’s why nothing changes,” she adds. “The lawyers, the guardians, the conservators, the judicial system, the American Bar Association, they don’t want the status quo to change because they’re making buckets of money.”
Echoing Williams’ statement in her documentary, Krooks says guardianship is an issue that’s important for the public at large to understand. “Regardless of what side of the street you’re on, this deserves attention because it can happen to anyone.”
For Dimond, the hope is that increased awareness will eventually lead to amended laws.
“This whole system is designed to, quote, ‘protect the vulnerable,’” she says. “This is not protective; this is predatory.”
