Inside Wendy Williams' Tragic Financial Issues
Sadly, Wendy Williams' life just keeps on getting more tragic. In May 2022, Williams was placed under a court-ordered financial and legal guardianship following a petition from Wells Fargo. In a letter sent to the court in January, the bank stated that it had frozen her accounts because it had "strong reason to believe that [Williams] is the victim of undue influence and financial exploitation," as Entertainment Tonight reported at the time. After lawyer Sabrina Morrissey was appointed as the former talk show host's guardian, her attorney, La'Shawn Thomas, confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter that his client wasn't on board with the decision.
Additionally, the guardianship apparently didn't do Williams' finances any favors because Page Six later reported that the millionaire was trying to sell some items from her New York home in 2023. Her financial woes were laid bare in a scene from the 2024 documentary "Where Is Wendy Williams?" with the beloved TV personality tearfully admitting, "I have no money," (via the New York Post). Meanwhile, when she appeared on "The Breakfast Club" podcast in January 2025, Williams shared that after decades of hard work, her net worth had apparently dwindled to just $15. She also asserted that she couldn't even use her money to pick specific necessities for herself and had to rely on the guardian to purchase and deliver whatever she needed.
After the interview aired, her attorney Roberta Kaplan shared a statement with People to clarify that the court had placed Williams under guardianship because her ability to make appropriate financial and legal decisions had greatly reduced following her frontal lobe dementia diagnosis. And yet, it's worth noting that the former talk show host's family wasn't convinced that Williams' health struggles warranted the guardianship.
She allegedly stopped making money from her talk show in 2021
In January 2025, Wendy Williams' niece, Alex Finnie, and a close friend of hers started a GoFundMe to raise $50,000 to fund the former talk show host's legal fight against her highly restrictive guardianship. Fans quickly made the fundraiser a great success by raising over $43,000 in just 10 days. While that is undoubtedly heartwarming, it also serves as a reminder of Williams' dire financial situation. Of course, it also begs the question: What happened to the money that the prolific and well-established media personality made from her talk show's 14-year run?
We already got the answer to that amidst Williams' legal spat with her ex-husband, Kevin Hunter Sr., in November 2022. Court documents obtained by The U.S. Sun revealed that Hunter sought to have his ex-wife reinstate the hefty payment mentioned in their divorce settlement. However, her lawyer fired back by pointing out that she hadn't received any money from "The Wendy Williams Show" since October 2021. They elaborated that she was told that "her contract was being suspended and that no compensation shall accrue or be payable to plaintiff for the duration of plaintiff's disability and incapacity."
The filings also made it clear that "she presently has no other television show being aired and paying her any income, let alone an equivalent salary." Unfortunately, Kevin Sr. wasn't the only person who tried to allegedly get money from Williams while she was down. In 2025, a People insider claimed that another unnamed member of her family had attempted to dig into her funds without her consent.