Wendy Williams’s Financial Guardian Is a New York Attorney

In the trailer for the Where is Wendy Williams? documentary that aired on Lifetime in two parts in February 2024, former talk show host Wendy Williams is distressed in nearly every scene. Leading up to the series, which is produced by Williams, her family expressed concerns about her court-appointed legal guardian. They told People Magazine that the guardian is the only person who has direct contact with Williams, and all communication goes through them.

Two days before the series aired, a press release from Ridge Hill Group revealed that Williams had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Since this devastating reveal, Williams’s financial guardian sued A&E Television Networks, Lifetime’s parent company, in an effort to stop the docuseries from being released, per TMZ. This led to a name: Sabrina Morrissey. Here’s what we know about Williams’s guardian.

According to her bio on the Morrissey & Morrissey, LLP website, Morrissey is an attorney based in New York City whose “primary focus is estate administration, guardianships, and litigation.” Morrissey is deeply committed to protecting her clients from fraud and abuse which often involves going to court in order to help them “obtain appropriate support in the home, safeguard their assets, and plan for the future.”

Acting as a temporary guardian for Williams, Morrissey filed a lawsuit against A&E Networks on Feb. 22, 2024. In it, she “sued for injunction relief and a temporary restraining order, both measures that can be used to keep a party from doing a certain action.” The action in question was Lifetime’s documentary. However, a judge ruled the following day that Lifetime could move forward with the series, per USA TODAY.

It’s important to note that in the documentary, Williams’s sister Wanda said she was asked to be her guardian. She was told it involved taking some sort of class. After agreeing to it, Wanda claimed the “walls came down” and then there was nothing. At this time, Wells Fargo appointed Morrissey as Williams’s guardian and all communication then went through her.

According to The U.S. Sun, Morrissey and 10 other attorneys from her law firm were “accused in the suit of conspiring to ‘perpetuate a baseless guardianship’ against an individual, Jose Verdugo, in New York who had won $5.5 million in a personal injury claim.” Michael Flomenhaft, of The Flomenhaft Lawfirm, PLLC, represented Verdugo after he sustained injuries from a construction accident.

In 2009, Herbert Rodriguez, Esq. at Schwartz Goldstone Campisi & Kates, LLP (SGCK), reached out to Verdugo, claiming that his “case could not be finalized unless Verdugo consented to an MHL Article 81 Guardianship that Verdugo did not want or need.” Rodriguez was a former associate of Flomenhaft’s and was working with Morrissey and her firm to allegedly reap “Morrissey & Morrissy substantial court- awarded fees as Guardian counsel through litigation: maligning Flomenhaft legally and ethically.”

Verdugo was placed under a forced guardianship with Morrissey as his guardian, from Jan. 19, 2010, until Oct. 7, 2015. During this time, the lawsuit claims that Verdugo’s money was used to pay for various lawsuits brought against Flomenhaft. As of the time of this writing, Verdugo is seeking $30 million in punitive damages from Morrissey and her firm.