Wendy Williams’ Legal Guardian Says She Is ‘Permanently Incapacitated’

Wendy Williams’ guardian claims that the former talk show host is “permanently incapacitated” after being diagnosed in 2023 with frontotemporal dementia and primary aggressive aphasia.

In a Nov. 12 court filing obtained by the New York Post, attorneys for Williams’ guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, said that the 60-year-old entertainer “has become cognitively impaired, permanently disabled, and incapacitated” due to her dementia diagnosis.

The filing continues that Williams’ team became “aware of a pattern of disturbing events concerning [Williams’] welfare and finances” back in January 2022, which prompted her bank, Wells Fargo, to take the “highly unusual step of initiating a guardianship proceeding on its own initiative” in the New York Supreme court to seek the court appointment of an independent guardian for Williams’ financial affairs.

Morrissey’s legal team subsequently asked the court for certain pieces of information concerning Williams’ “health, familial relationships, and finances” to be redacted from the guardianship proceedings in order to protect her privacy.

Williams, who hosted The Wendy Williams Show from 2008 to 2022, is currently embroiled in a legal battle with Lifetime over the release of the documentary Where Is Wendy Williams? in February.

Williams’ guardian initially attempted to stop Lifetime from releasing the documentary, filing a restraining order against the network just days before it was to be released. The request was denied, however, as a judge called it an “impermissible prior restraint on speech that violates the First Amendment of the institution.”

Williams’ guardians claim that Lifetime’s parent company, A&E Television Networks, Lifetime Entertainment Services, Entertainment One Reality Productions, Creature Films and director Mark Ford “cruelly took advantage of [Williams’] cognitive and physical decline by creating and publishing a documentary at a time when [Williams] was highly vulnerable and clearly incapable of consenting to be filmed.”

After an amended filing was submitted on Sept. 16, the case is now being handled by the federal court, with the defendants having filed countersuits against Morrisey.

Williams was last seen publicly on Aug. 19. The former radio host was seen stopping by the holistic store Bolingo Balance in Newark, New Jersey, while accompanied by her son, Kevin Hunt Jr. The mother-son outing marked the first time Williams had been seen in public since March 2023, nearly a year after she had been placed under a court-ordered guardianship.