Priscilla Presley is challenging what she calls the “purported 2016 amendment” to her daughter Lisa Marie’s living trust.
Court documents filed on January 26 and obtained by ABC News indicate that in 1993, Lisa Marie Presley, who passed away on January 12, “executed a revocable living trust,” also known as The Promenade Trust. In 2010, she “amended and completely restated” the trust to include her mother and former business manager, Barry Siegel.
According to Priscilla Presley’s latest court filings, “both the 1993 original trust and the 2010 restatement appear to be carefully drafted by competent estate planning attorneys.”
After Lisa Marie Presley passed away, Priscilla Presley learned about a “purported 2016 amendment” that replaced her and Siegel as trustees with Lisa Marie Presley’s children Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough, according to the documents.
According to court documents filed by Priscilla Presley, Riley Keough, 33, would become a co-trustee with her grandmother “with respect to the trust and all trust created thereunder” and the co-trustee of her own subtrust, which she would become sole trustee of at the age of 35.
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Abrams Speculated That If Multiple Problems Arose, “Then They Could Say That It Effectively Wasn’t Executed”
Abrams noted that claiming fraud, which you would prove by showing that it wasn’t even Lisa Marie Presley who filed the amendment, is “always an uphill battle.”
As Abrams put it, “very ugly” things can happen if Priscilla Presley and Riley Keough can’t come to an agreement on this.
Abrams concluded that it is Priscilla Presley’s “burden to prove that the amendment was effectively invalid.”
In 2018, Lisa Marie Presley sued Siegel, who had been managing her trust since 1993, for $100 million, accusing him of mismanaging her finances by selling an 85% stake in the Elvis Presley estate in 2005. This, she claimed, had set her on an “11-year odyssey to financial ruin” that left her deeply in debt.
She claimed Siegel had put the proceeds from the sale into a high-risk business venture that failed, and that he “stopped paying her taxes in 2012 (accumulating millions of dollars in debt), in an attempt to conceal her dire cash flow problems.”
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Siegel eventually filed a countersuit, claiming unpaid bills totaling $800,000. He stated that Lisa Marie Presley received $40 million from the 2005 deal she sued him over, which she used to pay off some of her outstanding debts.
Troubled Financial History
Lisa Marie Presley’s trust was the legal owner of Graceland, Elvis Presley’s estate and popular tourist destination, at the time of her death.
However, her financial difficulties surfaced in 2018, when she filed a lawsuit against her manager Barry Siegel, alleging that he was responsible for the trust’s decline from $100 million to $14,000 in cash by 2016. The current value of the trust is unclear.
A filing made by Priscilla Presley states that Siegel intended to resign from the trust, which would leave Priscilla Presley, age 77, and Riley Keough, age 33, as co-trustees under the trust’s previous terms.
Representatives for Riley Keough did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Young remarked that if the court sided with Priscilla, “the amendment will be treated as invalid and the changes made under that amendment will be voided.
” Therefore, if the amendment changed the successor Trustees by removing Priscilla and replacing her with her grandchildren, the amendment would be null and void, and Priscilla would remain the successor trustee.
Three of Lisa Marie Presley’s children are still alive. Riley Keough, her daughter with first husband Danny Keough, is 16 years old, and her twin daughters with fourth husband Michael Lockwood are 14 years old.
Even though Presley and Lockwood had been divorced since 2021, they were still fighting over money in family court when she passed away.
Priscilla Presley Challenges The “Invalid” Trust Amendment Concerning Lisa Marie
Since Lisa Marie’s death on January 12, Elvis’s wife has “discovered,” according to a new court filing, a contested document that seeks to remove her and former business manager Barry Siegel as co-trustees of her daughter’s Promenade Trust. The 2016 filing did not reveal where the purported amendment came from.
According to a new filing in Los Angeles County probate court, on March 11, 2016, Lisa Marie allegedly amended her will to appoint Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough, her now-deceased son, as co-trustees.
A lot of authority comes with the job. SEC filings show that in 2005, Lisa Marie sold 85% of Elvis Presley Enterprises (the company that owns Graceland and licenses Elvis Presley’s intellectual property) to The Promenade Trust for $50 million in cash, over $22 million in stock, and the repayment of debts exceeding $25 million.
According to Priscilla and her attorney in a new 13-page filing obtained by Rolling Stone, “there are many issues surrounding the authenticity and validity of the purported 2016 amendment.”
They claim the document was not given to Priscilla as required by the “express terms” of the trust agreement during Lisa Marie’s lifetime, that Priscilla’s name is misspelled, that it was not witnessed or notarized, and that “Lisa Marie’s signature appears inconsistent with her usual and customary signature.”
Because the actual amendment text is not included on the signature page, they warn that this “can present a higher risk for fraud.”
Because of these issues, they’ve filed a motion asking the court to “determine that the purported 2016 amendment is invalid, confirm the validity and existence of the restated 2010 trust, and confirm that the petitioner is the current trustee of the trust.”
Final Words
Priscilla left Elvis for good in 1972, and the couple’s home was sold shortly after she made the announcement. By this time, she was very unhappy in her marriage and had begun an extramarital affair with her karate instructor, Mike Stone.
