TLDR: Lisa Marie Presley removed her mother Priscilla from her trust in 2016 after her business manager lost nearly $100 million and left the estate with just $14,000 in cash. Lisa Marie also resented that Priscilla sided with her ex-husband during a custody battle and never protected her from alleged childhood abuse. The two were barely speaking in Lisa Marie’s final years.
When Priscilla Presley challenged her granddaughter Riley Keough for control of the Elvis estate in 2023, people wondered how things got so bad. The answer lies in a 2016 trust amendment where Lisa Marie quietly removed her mother from any control over the family fortune.
It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. Lisa Marie had spent years watching her inheritance evaporate under the management team her mother helped put in place. Add in deep childhood wounds and resentment over a messy divorce, and you get a relationship that was fractured long before Lisa Marie’s sudden death.
Here’s why Lisa Marie cut her mother out and gave control to her daughter Riley instead.
The Trust Lost $100 Million Under Priscilla’s Business Partner
When Lisa Marie inherited the Elvis estate at age 25 in 1993, it was worth about $100 million. That was thanks to Priscilla, who’d saved it from bankruptcy in the 1980s by opening Graceland to tourists.
Lisa Marie knew she didn’t have the expertise to manage that kind of money, so she set up the Promenade Trust with Priscilla and business manager Barry Siegel as co-trustees. They’d keep running things like they had been.
For a while, it worked fine. Then it spectacularly fell apart.
In 2005, Barry Siegel made a massive decision. He sold 85% of the trust’s stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises (the company managing Elvis’s brand and Graceland) for $100 million.
That sounds like a smart move, right? Except by 2015, the trust was down to just $14,000 in cash and buried under mountains of debt.
Where did $100 million go in a decade? Lisa Marie wanted answers.
Lisa Marie Sued Her Mother’s Business Partner in 2018
In 2018, Lisa Marie filed a lawsuit against Barry Siegel for gross mismanagement. The lawsuit laid out just how badly things had gone.
She accused Siegel of paying himself massive fees while her trust bled money. She also pointed out that Priscilla was pulling in an annual salary of $900,000 from the estate even though Priscilla technically didn’t own any stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises at that point.
Think about that. Priscilla was getting nearly a million dollars a year while Lisa Marie’s own trust was going broke.
This wasn’t just about money. It was about trust. Priscilla had helped install Siegel as the co-trustee. She’d been part of the management team that oversaw this disaster. And from Lisa Marie’s perspective, her mother had either been asleep at the wheel or complicit in the mismanagement.
The financial collapse shattered whatever faith Lisa Marie had left in her mother’s business judgment.
The 2016 Trust Amendment Kicked Out the Old Guard
In March 2016, right in the middle of this financial mess, Lisa Marie reportedly made a radical change to her living trust. She executed an amendment that removed both Priscilla Presley and Barry Siegel as co-trustees.
Who did she replace them with? Her two oldest children, Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough.
This was Lisa Marie saying “I’m done with the old guard. I don’t trust you anymore. I’m putting my kids in charge.”
After Benjamin tragically died by suicide in 2020, Riley became the sole designated successor trustee. That meant when Lisa Marie died in 2023, control would go directly to Riley, completely bypassing Priscilla.
Priscilla claimed she never received this amendment during Lisa Marie’s lifetime, which is why she challenged it in court in 2023. But the intent was crystal clear: Lisa Marie wanted her mother out.
They Were Barely Speaking in the Final Years
The financial disaster wasn’t the only thing driving a wedge between mother and daughter. By Lisa Marie’s final years, they were barely speaking at all.
A major source of tension was Lisa Marie’s fourth husband, Michael Lockwood. Lisa Marie and Lockwood split in 2016 and entered a nasty custody battle over their twin daughters, Harper and Finley.
Lisa Marie felt that Priscilla sided with Lockwood during the divorce. When Priscilla showed up to Lisa Marie’s funeral with Lockwood in January 2023, Riley Keough reportedly found it deeply inappropriate. It reinforced the sense that Priscilla had chosen her ex-son-in-law over her own daughter.
Sources close to the family said the relationship between Lisa Marie and Priscilla in those final years was cold and distant. They weren’t having heart-to-heart conversations. They weren’t leaning on each other for support. The bond was broken.
The Childhood Trauma Lisa Marie Never Got Over
To really understand the fracture between Lisa Marie and Priscilla, you have to go back to Lisa Marie’s childhood. And it’s dark.
In her posthumous memoir “From Here to the Great Unknown” and in earlier interviews, Lisa Marie made allegations about Michael Edwards, a model Priscilla dated from 1978 to 1984.
Lisa Marie alleged that Edwards behaved in “sexually inappropriate” ways toward her, entering her room while drunk. She said these incidents started in 1978 when she was just a child.
Whether Priscilla knew about this at the time or not, Lisa Marie clearly felt unprotected in her own home during her most vulnerable years. That kind of betrayal, even if unintentional, leaves scars that never fully heal.
If Lisa Marie felt her mother failed to protect her as a child, it makes sense that she wouldn’t trust Priscilla to protect her interests as an adult. That childhood wound likely colored every conflict they had later in life.
Lisa Marie Wanted Riley to Have Control
By removing Priscilla from the trust, Lisa Marie wasn’t just punishing her mother. She was making a positive choice about who she did trust: her daughter Riley.
Riley was in her mid-20s when she was named co-trustee in 2016. She’d already established herself as a serious actress and showed the maturity and stability Lisa Marie wanted protecting the family legacy.
More importantly, Riley represented the next generation. She wasn’t tied to the old guard of managers and advisors who’d run the estate into the ground. She had fresh eyes and, crucially, she had Lisa Marie’s complete trust.
The 2016 amendment was Lisa Marie’s way of saying “I want my daughter to control this when I’m gone, not my mother.”
What Happened After Lisa Marie Died
When Lisa Marie died suddenly in January 2023, that 2016 trust amendment immediately became the most important document in the probate case.
Priscilla challenged it, claiming she never received it and questioning its validity. If she’d won, the trust would have reverted to the 2010 version where she and Barry Siegel were in charge. Riley would have been shut out completely.
But by May 2023, they reached a settlement. Riley became the sole trustee, exactly as the 2016 amendment intended. Priscilla got a $1 million payout, $400,000 in legal fees covered, and a ceremonial advisor role worth $100,000 a year.
The settlement basically honored Lisa Marie’s wishes. Control went to Riley, the person Lisa Marie trusted most. Priscilla was taken care of financially but removed from power.
By late 2023 and into 2024, Priscilla and Riley reconciled publicly. They walked red carpets together and spoke lovingly about each other. But the power structure is exactly what Lisa Marie wanted: Riley in charge, Priscilla on the sidelines.
The Bottom Line
Lisa Marie cut her mother out of the trust because Priscilla’s business partner lost a $100 million fortune, because she felt unsupported during her divorce, and because of deep wounds from childhood that never healed.
It wasn’t a decision made in anger or spite. It was the result of years of watching her inheritance disappear, feeling abandoned during hard times, and ultimately deciding her daughter would be a better guardian of the family legacy than her mother had been.
The fact that Priscilla and Riley eventually reconciled doesn’t change what Lisa Marie wanted. The 2016 trust amendment was Lisa Marie’s final word on who she trusted with her father’s legacy.
And that person was Riley, not Priscilla.
