Priscilla Presley disputes validity of Lisa Marie’s will

Priscilla Presley has filed a lawsuit disputing the validity of her late daughter’s will, setting up a potential legal battle over Lisa Marie Presley’s estate.

In a filing in Los Angeles superior court, lawyers for Priscilla questioned the integrity of a 2016 amendment which removed her from Lisa Marie’s living trust, a legal document that serves the function of a will if a separate will is not filed.

That amendment also removed Lisa Marie’s former business manager, Barry Siegel, from the trust and replaced him with Riley and Benjamin Benjamin Keough, Lisa Marie’s children from her first marriage.

Benjamin Keough died in 2020. Lisa Marie died at a California hospital aged 54 on 12 January, after paramedics answered a 911 call reporting her to be in cardiac arrest. Lisa Marie was buried in Memphis at her family’s Graceland mansion last week, after a funeral attended by singers Alanis Morissette and Axl Rose.

Priscilla’s court filing contends that the 2016 amendment should be overturned and that she and Riley Keough should be named as co-trustees of Lisa Marie’s estate.

Lisa Marie inherited $100m from her late father, the rock’n’roll legend Elvis Presley, at the age of 25 in 1993. In a 2018 lawsuit, however, Lisa Marie claimed she was down to just $14,000, and blamed Siegel for mismanaging her finances.

According to Priscilla’s filing, there are several issues that bring the authenticity of the amendment to Lisa Marie’s living trust into doubt.

Her lawyers allege that Priscilla was not notified of the changes, even though the trust required that.

Priscilla’s lawyers also say her name was misspelled in a document and claim the new amendment was not witnessed or notarized. The filing also suggests an atypical signature by Lisa Marie on the amendment.

It asks a judge to declare the amendment invalid, and for the trust to revert to a 2010 version which placed Priscilla and Siegel in charge.

The filing says that Siegel intended to resign, which, according to 2010 terms of the trust, would leave Priscilla, 77, and Riley Keough, 33, to oversee Lisa Marie’s estate.

Lisa Marie left three surviving children. In addition to Riley Keough, she had 14-year-old twin daughters with her fourth husband, Michael Lockwood. Lisa Marie divorced from Lockwood in 2021, but the two were still disputing finances in family court when she died.

Priscilla’s filing is among the first of what are likely to be many legal manoeuvres surrounding the estate of Lisa Marie, Elvis’s sole heir.

However, it is not clear how much that estate is worth. In her 2018 lawsuit, Lisa Marie accused Siegel of “reckless and negligent mismanagement” of the estate and claimed her cash reserves were squandered because of Siegel’s poor investment decisions.

Siegel alleged in a lawsuit of his own that Lisa Marie had frittered away much of her fortune. He demanded $800,000 in damages for non-payment.

Priscilla Presley recently issued a statement on Twitter that said she and her loved ones were having “a very difficult time” after Lisa Marie’s death.

“Thank you all for your condolences. You have touched me with your words,” the statement read. “It has been a very difficult time, but just knowing your love is out there makes a difference.”

Elvis’s estate was valued at $4.9m at the time of his death, but it had grown to $100m when Lisa Marie took control of it.

In 2005, she sold the majority of the estate’s business shares to Industrial Media but retained control of Graceland.

Lisa Marie spent her early years living at Graceland but moved with her mother to Los Angeles after her parents divorced. Despite the split, Lisa Marie would often fly back to Memphis to spend time with her father at Graceland.

Graceland offers public tours of the mansion and the planes with which Elvis and his team flew around the country during his career. There are also sprawling museum exhibits that have helped make Graceland the second-most visited home museum in the US after the White House, attracting more than 600,000 guests a year.

The looming court battle over the validity of Lisa Marie’s will comes after the US actor Austin Butler learned on 24 January that he had been nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Elvis in the 2022 Baz Luhrmann biopic titled Elvis. The movie is also nominated for awards in cinematography, editing, makeup and hairstyling, production design and sound.

The Associated Press contributed reporting