Erika Jayne said her estranged husband Tom Girardi was put into a facility because his family doesn't 'want the public scrutiny'

• Erika Jayne opened up about Tom Girardi's health problems on "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills."
• Jayne said that Girardi's brother wanted to put him in a facility, a decision she disagreed with.
• She added that his family didn't want to deal with the bad publicity from his ongoing legal issues.

Erika Jayne opened up about her estranged husband Tom Girardi's health issues during Wednesday night's episode of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills."

Jayne, 50, told her costars that Girardi's brother Robert had requested to put the 82-year-old attorney into a facility that treats dementia after being named as his conservator.

The ruling came just months after a lawsuit accused both Girardi and Jayne of embezzling millions of dollars from the widows and orphans of plane crash victims to fund their lavish lifestyle.

"That just really bothered me," Jayne said of Giradi being placed in the facility. "I'm ready to have a nervous breakdown. Regardless of what is going on with him legally, this is someone I was married to for 22 years."

Jayne - who filed for divorce in November - told her costars that while she believed Girardi needed a caretaker, she didn't think he should be put in a facility.

"I can't be married to the man, but I certainly don't want him in some facility where he's not taken care of and discarded," she continued. "That is just something that I don't feel is OK. Want to know who your friends are? Get old and go broke."

Jayne then suggested that Girardi's family didn't want to deal with the bad publicity from his ongoing legal issues.

"They don't want the stain," she continued. "They don't want the public scrutiny. It is tragic, all the way around."

Girardi's brother became his conservator back in January

Robert first requested to be named Girardi's conservator on January 20, claiming his brother "cannot care for himself without assistance."

"His short-term memory is severely compromised and, on information and belief, he is often not oriented as to date, time, or place," the petition stated, according to The Blast. "Left to his own devices, it is highly doubtful that Tom could manage most of the activities of daily living for any significant period of time without assistance."

People reported that Girardi had a mental assessment on February 26 and a psychiatrist diagnosed him with dementia and late-onset Alzheimer's disease in a sworn declaration submitted to the court.

"Dementia impairs his ability to understand the hearing," Long Beach forensic and clinical psychiatrist Dr. Nathan Lavid wrote, according to the same People report. "His emotional distress is directly related to his dementia and exacerbated by his confusion."

On a previous episode of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," Jayne told her costars that Girardi's personality "completely changed" and he lost the ability to hold a conversation after he drove off a cliff and was left unconscious for 12 hours.

"The conversations that I used to have with him - the back-and-forth was no longer," she said. "The repetitive phrases, the forgetting what we were talking about. I would hear the same stories 10 times in one day."

"The Real Housewives of Beverly Hill" airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.