Lisa Marie Presley, the one child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley who died on Thursday at age 54, leaves behind a rock-and-roll legacy — including a rocky financial path stuffed with losses and lawsuits over money.
Presley, a singer-songwriter like her father, wasn’t wealthy enough to make the Forbes list of highest-paid entertainers, while some celebrity web sites even estimated that she can have had a negative net value at her death.
An in depth glimpse of her financial situation emerged in 2018 when she sued her former manager, Barry Siegel, claiming he had mismanaged her funds, leading to her $100 million trust dwindling to $14,000 in money by 2016. The lawsuit also claimed Presley had racked up $500,000 in bank card debt, according to Reuters.
Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis Presley, dies at 54Lisa Marie Presley wrote about grief in her last post before her death
Starting in 2005, Presley suffered an “11-year odyssey to bankruptcy,” the lawsuit claimed. “Lisa has been damaged in an amount that has not yet been fully ascertained, but is believed to be in excess of $100 million.”
The suit followed her 2021 divorce from musician Michael Lockwood. Through the divorce proceedings, Presley claimed she was $16 million in debt, with most of that stemming from unpaid taxes, in line with TMZ.
Presley blamed the foundation reason behind her financial woes on a 2005 deal to sell an 85% stake within the Elvis Presley Estate (EPE) to CKX, an entertainment company that also owned the “American Idol” television show.
To make certain, Presley didn’t come away empty handed from the deal: She received $50 million plus stock in CKX, together with keeping a 15% interest in EPE, in addition to the title to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s estate that’s now a tourist attraction, the Associated Press reported on the time. CKX was later sold to Apollo Global Management for $509 million.
But Presley’s suit claimed that Siegel put his own financial interests ahead of her own, alleging he bought a $9 million English home using the trust’s money yet putting that stake in danger when he wasn’t capable of pay for a $6.7 million balloon payment, the Memphis Industrial Appeal reported.
Meanwhile, Siegel countered in his own lawsuit that Presley’s financial problems were on account of her own missteps. The litigation claimed she had “twice squandered” her inheritance and blamed her “spendthrift ways,” Reuters said.
But Presley remained the only real owner of Graceland, the Memphis Industrial Appeal said. And her 15% stake in EPE likely continues to generate a gentle income, provided that Elvis Presley is ranked because the No. 4 top-earning dead celebrity in 2022, in line with Forbes. Her father’s estate could generate annual revenue of as much as $110 million, the magazine estimated.