Wendy Williams’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, has claimed that her conservatorship is officially coming to an end.
The former TV host, 61, was first placed into a guardianship, with Sabrina Morrissey appointed as her court-ordered guardian, in 2022, to protect Williams from financial abuse as her bank felt she was being exploited. She was later diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and progressive aphasia the following year, a diagnosis Williams has publicly denied.
Now, Tacopina has claimed that Williams will be “out” of the conservatorship by the end of the year.
“[Williams] does not have frontotemporal dementia, so that should be game, set, match,” the attorney said during an interview with ABC’s Nightline, published Tuesday.
“The plan is this: there are guardianship attorneys, and we’re watching and waiting, and they’ve assured Wendy by year’s end she’ll be out of guardianship,” he added.
Tacopina’s comments come one month after TMZ reported that Williams underwent a series of medical tests in New York City, with a neurologist determining that her frontotemporal dementia diagnosis was inaccurate.
Frontotemporal dementia — which is the condition actor Bruce Willis has — mainly affects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, which are associated with personality, behavior, and language, as noted by the Mayo Clinic. Symptoms can include difficulty speaking, loss of inhibition, muscle weakness, tremor, or trouble walking.
Williams has previously spoken about her desire to end the conservatorship. During a pre-taped interview on The View, which aired in March, she discussed a hospital visit that took place after she issued a cry for help to paparazzi from the assisted living facility where she was staying.
“I was having a little agita,” she told the hosts. “Look, where I live, at that memory unit on this floor, you know, I just needed a breath of fresh air. I needed to see the doctors. So that’s why I went to the hospital.”
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Besides getting some “blood drawn for my thyroid,” Williams said that she passed a cognitive test “with flying colors,” which she said proved she no longer needed a conservatorship. “It was my choice to get an independent evaluation on my incapacitation, which I don’t have it,” she exclaimed. “How dare they say I have incapacitation?! I do not.”
In January, she also denied being “cognitively impaired,” while comparing the care facility she’s living in to a “prison.”
“I am definitely isolated. To talk to these people who live here, that is not my cup of tea... I’m in this place where the people are in their Nineties and their Eighties and their Seventies… There’s something wrong with these people here on this floor,” she said at the time, while calling into The Breakfast Club radio show
Williams is best known for her eponymously titled chat show, The Wendy Williams Show, which she hosted from 2008 to 2021. She stepped away as host due to medical issues, with numerous guest hosts filling in. The show was ultimately cancelled in 2022.
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