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Wendy Williams’ World is Our World, Too.

January 25, 2025

When I titled this blog, I deliberately employed the word “Domestic Relations” because family law incorporates a lot of different family matters. This week brought us video of former television personality Wendy Williams where we could judge for ourselves whether she needed to live in a world where her relationships and her money should be managed by others. Any one of us could come out of that experience asking: “Could that be me?”

The answer is a disconcerting “yes.”  I encourage every reader to view the interviews and other video online to make their own assessment. But I also caution you to understand that mental incapacity is not a bright line. In fact, it’s a hazy line that can shift from day to day. As anyone who has dealt with an aging family member can tell you, one day your parents can do quadratic equations while the next day they can’t identify a sister’s husband or a daughter’s married name.

What makes this all the more challenging is how we live today. When we were an agrarian society, it was easier. Mom and dad owned the farm and lived in the “big house” until they couldn’t manage that. Then the kids moved into the big house and mom and dad moved into a smaller property on the farm. Mom and dad were not on the internet and they didn’t get calls from outsiders offering to sell them Bitcoins or to reverse mortgage the homestead. Today, they can and will.

As someone who has litigated some incapacity cases, I watched the Wendy Williams videos with interest. Long ago, I tried a case which still resonates with me. I represented two sisters of a physician then in his 80s. They came to me telling me that their dad had lost it and their brother was grifting. This smelled like more of a family fight than a true incapacity case but then I learned that the doctor had suddenly changed his will and one day tried to call my client more than 60 times. Normal people might adjust their estate plans from time to time but calling a now estranged daughter once every three minutes signals a deeper problem.

When we finally got to court, I had my first chance to meet the octogenarian doc in the witness box. He was well dressed; well behaved. Every bit Marcus Welby in the twilight of life. I noticed that while he was answering questions from his lawyer, he was not really engaged. The answers were all superficial. An adult who was “in the game” would have been incensed that his own daughters had the temerity to challenge his decision to change residence and to cut them out of his estate plan. He was completely detached from any of these events.

When I examined him on the stand, he never lost his composure. But then I asked: “Sir these telephone records show you called my client no less than 60 times on the morning of {whatever}. Why would you do that?” The response opened the door to the issue.  “I needed to reach her.”  I then asked: “Can you tell what was on your mind that you would call anyone on an average of once every three minutes for three consecutive hours?” His response was cagey. “I don’t understand your question.” I then asked, “What was on your mind that day?” Answer: “I don’t know.”

The physician sitting in the witness box that day was managing my questions. But he had no idea who he was or what he was doing that day four months earlier when he was dialing his phone like a madman to talk to a daughter, he professed to no longer like. He could not explain what his daughters did to prompt him to relocate his residence (he lived with one daughter) and alter his estate plan.

People struggling with mental incapacity can often fake their “capacity.” But when confronted with explaining their reasoning process, they often fall apart. Of the few Wendy Williams videos online was one where she is in bed. A person in the room indicates that he is taking away a bottle of alcohol. Nothing wrong with Wendy Williams being in bed. We’ve all been there. But when people professing to rest in bed decide to argue that they “need” a bedside bottle of booze, lights start to go off.

The videos online include many interviews with friends and family, some of whom profess that their interactions with Williams indicate that no outside guardianship is needed. It may well be that Wendy and fellow star Brittany Spears are perfectly competent-for most of every day. But as we wrote at the outset, 30 minutes on the phone or the computer with a wily inquisitor at a vulnerable time can cost an impaired person a lifetime of savings.

Incapacity is insidious. There is no bright line. Meanwhile, if you have money, there are many people lined up to help as the Spears case suggests. The Williams and Spears cases also suggest that the guardianship system is fraught with problems. That’s a very fair assessment. But impairment can change by the day, week or month. And courts lack the bandwidth to measure it on a continuing basis. This is especially true in the case of Williams (age 60) and Spears (age 43) who seem otherwise physically healthy and capable of living long lives.