Elvis’s first and only wife, Priscilla Presley, 77, has reached a settlement agreement with her granddaughter, Riley Keough, 33, after several months in which she has questioned the legitimacy of her eldest daughter’s will. , Lisa Marie Presley, who died last January due to a heart problem at the age of 54.
The agreement, made public this Tuesday, May 16, resolves a dispute that arose as a result of an amendment made by Lisa Marie herself in her will in 2016. The legal battle began at the end of January, just four days after her funeral. Then, Priscilla Presley’s lawyers presented a petition before a court in Los Angeles (California) in which they questioned the “authenticity and validity” of said amendment, which eliminated both Priscilla and the wife as trustees of the will. person who helped Lisa Marie with her businesses, Barry Siegel. Priscilla always disagreed with this change, and hence this disagreement that has lasted for months. According to these last wills, the daughter of the missing king of Rock And Roll She replaced her mother and Siegel with her children, Riley and Benjamin Keough, born from her marriage to Danny Keough, who was her first husband between 1988 and 1996. After the death of Benjamin Keough, who committed suicide in 2020 at just 27 years old , her eldest daughter would, therefore, be the manager of the entire estate of the singer, which is estimated at more than 100 million euros.
“There is an agreement, the families are happy, united and excited for the future,” said Ronson Shamoun, Priscilla Presley’s lawyer, in statements reported by the American press after leaving the hearing that took place in the Los County Superior Court. Angeles (California, USA). Priscilla Presley, for her part, expressed her satisfaction with the agreement in a statement while also asking for privacy. “My family has resolved this confusion. As a family, we are pleased to have resolved this together. The Presley family is stronger than ever,” she said in the letter. According to Riley Keough’s legal representative, Justin Gold, the interpreter is also happy with the resolution: “If not, she would not have agreed to the agreement.”
Presley’s petition filed last January questioned the validity of those changes in his daughter’s will for several reasons: first, because the amendment was not made in the presence of any witnesses or signed before a notary; second, because the change was not communicated to Priscilla Presley during her lifetime; and, finally, because her name was misspelled in the document. Thus, Lisa Marie Presley’s mother argued that the document should be considered invalid. Now, the dispute has been resolved, but what has not been made public is who will be in charge of managing the assets of Elvis’s only daughter, if her mother, if her own daughter, if they will do it between the two or if it will be a third. What is known is that the resolution must be endorsed with a judicial document signed by both parties before June 12 and in another hearing scheduled for August 4. According to the magazine Peoplewho has had access to sources close to the family who suggest that grandmother and granddaughter do not want the other to be the manager of the estate, if the court were to annul the modification made in 2016, Priscilla and Keough would share the administration.
Priscilla Presley divorced Elvis in 1973, after six years of marriage, and together they only had Lisa Marie, who maintained control of Graceland until her death, the famous mansion owned by her father in the city of Memphis, Tennessee, visited by tens of thousands of fans every year and in which the star was found dead in August 1977. In that same estate she would be buried last January, the same place where her son is also. In her brief professional career, the heiress of the king of rock tried to follow in her father’s footsteps and in 2003 she released her first album, To Whom it May Concern. Two more productions followed, but since 2012 he had not released any new album.
Throughout her life, the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley had four children and married as many times. Specifically, with the musician Danny Keough; pop star Michael Jackson (in a marriage that lasted just 20 months); actor Nicolas Cage (this one was even shorter, three and a half months); and with guitarist and producer Michael Lockwood. She married the latter in 2006 in Japan and had two girls, twins, Harper and Finley, who in the last years of her life were in the custody of Priscilla.
