Wendy Williams Initially Requested For a Guardianship (Unique Supply)

• Wendy Williams’ well being care advocate Ginalisa Monterroso tells PEOPLE that the previous speak present initially wished to be in a guardianship regardless of her need to finish it now
• Monterroso claims Williams “handed” the psychological capability exams throughout her hospital go to on March 10, including, “She was alert and oriented, and we have been happy with that”
• Williams will maintain a protest towards her guardianship in New York and Los Angeles on Tuesday, April 1

Wendy Williams lately amped up her calls for to be freed from a restrictive guardianship that she alleges controls each side of her life. However her need to finish it wasn’t all the time this fashion. Three years in the past, Williams allegedly agreed with the courts to be overseen by her court-appointed authorized guardian Sabrina Morrissey.

Since Could 2022, the previous TV host, 60, has been residing underneath a authorized guardianship that oversees each her funds and well being. Williams is at the moment residing in a luxurious high-rise assisted-living facility in New York to handle her cognitive points and dementia prognosis in 2023. Morrissey is the one one that at the moment has unfettered entry to her. Williams’ household informed PEOPLE final 12 months that she will name them, however they can’t name her themselves.

Nonetheless, Williams’ well being care advocate, Ginalisa Monterroso, completely tells PEOPLE that Williams initially wished to be positioned in a guardianship with the courts. She claims her shopper did not know all her rights could be taken away — together with having no entry to the Web or a cellphone.

In early 2022, Williams’ 24-year-old son Kevin Hunter Jr. and her ex-husband, Kevin Hunter, have been the themes of public scrutiny when courtroom filings confirmed that Wells Fargo froze her accounts after her monetary adviser on the time, Lori Schiller, alleged that she was of “unsound thoughts.” In a letter to the courtroom on Feb. 4, 2022 — and obtained by PEOPLE — Williams claimed Wells Fargo had “denied [her] any entry, whether or not on-line or in any other case, to her monetary accounts, belongings, and statements” for greater than two weeks.

Hunter Jr. was Williams’ energy of legal professional and reportedly took a big sum of cash from her account, finally elevating flags on the financial institution. The financial institution efficiently petitioned a New York courtroom to have Williams first positioned underneath short-term monetary guardianship that became a full guardianship underneath the state legal guidelines of New York.

The courtroom paperwork said on the time that Wells Fargo had “a number of million {dollars}” of Williams’ funds in its possession. The financial institution, in its filings to the courtroom, stated it froze the funds as a result of “Wells Fargo has robust purpose to consider that [Williams] is the sufferer of undue affect and monetary exploitation.” It didn’t specify who or what’s exploiting or unduly influencing Williams.

Monterroso now claims that Williams thought that as a result of Wells Fargo flagged the account — and that it went by the courts — they might defend her financially. “She wished to verify no one’s in her cash and he or she could be tremendous,” provides Monterroso. “She sort of felt like, ‘Hey, I’ve the courtroom. They are going to signal me a cash individual. I’ll be good.’ By no means did she assume that our complete life was going to be taken away from her.”

A month after the guardian was appointed, Williams was caught on digital camera handed out at a Louis Vuitton retailer, drunk. She entered a wellness facility beginning in September 2022 and has been residing at one other facility in New York for the previous few years.

“Lots of people could be like, ‘Nicely, I might query [the guardianship] extra. However when every part is occurring so rapidly and the financial institution is saying, ‘Anyone’s attempting to take your cash and there is one thing happening, you are simply attempting to sort of save your self,” says Monterroso. “Why would you not belief the courts, proper? Why would the courts change into your enemy?”

However underneath Williams’ guardianship, she will not resolve the place to stay, easy methods to spend her cash or have a checking account. She will’t vote, marry or resolve the medical doctors she’d like to make use of or what pals can go to her on the facility. She has to get particular permission from Morrissey and generally even Choose Lisa A. Sokoloff, who’s overseeing her affairs, to journey out of state. “You haven’t any rights,” says Monterroso. “Anyone in jail has extra rights than an individual put underneath a guardianship.”

So far as Williams’ household petitioning to be her guardian within the interim, Monterosso says that her shopper “actually did not need her household to be concerned. She did not need to sort of burden them with something,” she provides.

“How did she go from this aunt or sister that we love and is wholesome one minute to this one that’s out and in of the hospital?” Williams’ sister Wanda Finnie requested in PEOPLE’s February 2024 cowl story. “How is that system higher than the system the household may put in place? I do not know. I do know that this method is damaged. I hope that sooner or later, Wendy turns into robust sufficient the place she will communicate on her personal behalf.”

However now Williams has a voice. “Wendy feels as if she has a voice and alter to get out, so she does not need to attempt to get an alternate plan,” Monterosso continues. “She’s capable of get counsel, everyone’s trying on the case — and there is motion. Individuals are listening to her now, so she’s assured that she’s going to proceed to combat.”

On Thursday, Jan. 16, Williams was in tears as she begged to get her out of her guardianship and return to life outdoors the partitions of the wellness facility in New York Metropolis through which she’s been ordered to stay. Showing on The Breakfast Membership for a uncommon interview, she spoke out about her scenario to host Charlamagne Tha God.

“I’m not cognitively impaired however I really feel like I’m in jail,” Williams stated. “I’m on this place with people who find themselves of their nineties and their eighties and their seventies… These individuals, there’s one thing mistaken with these individuals right here on this ground. I’m clearly not.”

Two months later, Williams pressed a handwritten notice to the window of her luxurious high-rise assisted-living facility that learn “Assist! Wendy!” This resulted in police and medical personnel intervening and sending her in an ambulance for analysis on March 10. She was then escorted out of the constructing, and EMS transported her in an ambulance to an area hospital “for analysis,” a spokesperson for the New York Police Division informed PEOPLE on the time.

Monterroso claims that the notice was “extra of a joke” however that she and Williams deliberate the decision with 9-1-1 the day earlier than to draw media consideration and get one other analysis for her shopper. After submitting a criticism with Grownup Protecting Providers earlier this month, Monterroso says Williams is “excited” for a jury to find out if her guardianship ought to be terminated following extra psychological competency testing.

“I wished to make consciousness to the general public that that is very severe and it’s a crime to maintain someone remoted,” Monterroso continues. “And so I simply stated [to Wendy] ‘We’ll name the police. “It was simply extra of a strategic transfer to simply sort of get extra proof as a result of this case has been caught,” she explains. 

She provides the choice to move through ambulance was made as a result of they may “at the least do a brief mini-assessment” on the hospital and “have some documentation from someone else outdoors of this guardianship that may attest” to Williams not being incapacitated. Monterroso additional claims Williams “handed” the psychological capability exams on the hospital, including, “She was alert and oriented, and we have been happy with that.”

After the transient hospitalization, Williams went out to dinner together with her niece Alex Finnie and headed again to her unit carrying a pink fuzzy Versace gown and waving to onlookers. Though Williams has under no circumstances given up her combat for extra freedom, the police have been known as after she was reported lacking at her facility. (A police report was filed however Monterroso claims it was a “misunderstanding”).

Investigative journalist Diane Dimond — who launched a ebook concerning the guardianship system, We’re Right here to Assist: When Guardianship Goes Flawed, in September 2024 — informed PEOPLE final 12 months an estimated 2 million individuals are presently residing underneath the courtroom’s management.

“A guardian generally is a member of the family, it might be your finest pal, it might be a wonderfully reliable commoner, so to talk,” Dimond stated. “After investigating this for eight or 9 years now, judges are overlooking members of the family, they’re overlooking pals they usually’re going instantly to those skilled, for-profit appointees, they usually’re full strangers to those wards of the courtroom. So inside that, the ward of the courtroom loses all their civil rights. They don’t have any extra rights to resolve something about their private life or their monetary life.”

Lately, Williams known as into The View, saying she wished Morrissey to “get off my neck.”

“Wendy has expressed her frustration and need for freedom on a number of events, stating publicly: ‘I really feel like I’m in jail,’ ” a supply near Wendy tells PEOPLE. “Nobody ought to really feel imprisoned in their very own life — particularly not somebody who has confirmed again and again that she is succesful, clever, and deserving of dignity. This motion is about dignity. It’s about voice. And it’s about justice.”

Bicoastal rallies for Williams will probably be held at Coterie Hudson Yards in New York and the Hollywood Stroll of Fame in Los Angeles at Williams’ star on Tuesday, April 1 starting at 10:00 a.m. native. A GoFundMe has additionally been launched to boost $50,000 to assist Williams’ authorized combat.

The identical supply says Williams will probably be cheering supporters from contained in the window of her New York facility till 2 p.m. ET.