Tom Girardi was spotted in public for the first time since his estranged wife, Erika Jayne, announced the couple’s split in November 2020.
In photos obtained by Page Six, the former lawyer, 82, had a bruised left eye and slimmer frame as he walked outside with the help of an unidentified woman. His health has been a topic of conversation throughout the ongoing battle over his law firm Girardi Keese’s bankruptcy case.
In February, his brother, Robert Girardi, was named his temporary conservator, and the following month, court documents revealed that Tom had been diagnosed with late-onset Alzheimer’s and dementia.
At the time, clinical psychiatrist Dr. Nathan Lavid wrote in an affidavit that Tom suffered from “moderate” delusions and would not be able to attend any court hearings “for the foreseeable future.”
Lavid continued: “Dementia impairs his ability to understand the hearing. His emotional distress is directly related to his dementia and exacerbated by his confusion.”
Three months later, however, Tom spoke out against the conservatorship in a court hearing, but in July, a judge made it official. According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly, the decision was made due to Tom’s dementia diagnosis, described as a major neurocognitive disorder.
Erika, 50, traced some of her husband’s health woes back to 2017 in a recent episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, claiming that a car accident left him “unconscious for 12 hours.” The Pretty Mess author added that he suffered a head injury, broken clavicle and broken shoulder.
Some of her RHOBH castmates were skeptical about her story because she’d previously told them that he’d injured only his ankle in the crash.
“I thought, ‘Well, I wonder why she didn’t tell us that at the time,’ but, you know, in hindsight now I’m thinking maybe because he was going through some mental decline of some sort and maybe they didn’t want that out there publicly because he was running this law firm,” Kyle Richards said during the Thursday, July 29, episode of the RHOBH after show. “Maybe it was none of our business because she was scared to say how bad the accident was.”
In December 2020, Us confirmed that Tom’s lawyers were questioning his health amid lawsuits filed against him and his firm that alleged he and Erika embezzled funds earmarked for families of the Lion Air Flight 610 plane crash victims.
“His attorney said that she feels that he is not mentally well,” the Bravo personality said of her estranged husband during the July 21 episode of RHOBH. “Tom’s sole identity is being a great lawyer. That’s all he ever wanted to be in life and he put that ahead of everything, everything. These last few years, you know, when I noticed him declining, I think he held on even tighter.”
