Within Priscilla Presley and Riley Keough’s Fight Over Lisa Marie’s Belief: ‘They Don’t Stare Watch to Watch’

Moments earlier than Lisa Marie Presley’s memorial began on Jan. 22 in Memphis, her family — mom Priscilla, half-brother Navarone Garibaldi Garcia, daughters Riley Keough and twins Finley and Harper Lockwood, alongside side the twins’ dad, Michael Lockwood — looked united as they exited Graceland and took their seats on the front lawn.

As hundreds of fans regarded on, Lisa Marie’s cherished ones delivered shifting tributes. But within the encourage of the scenes, drama became once brewing.

“Michael became once no longer invited,” a end friend of Lisa Marie’s maintains in this week’s PEOPLE hide chronicle, on newsstands Friday. “He got here to Memphis below the pretense that he needed to chaperone the twins — and he forced his system in with Priscilla’s abet. The closing thing Lisa Marie would maintain wished became once for Michael to be there.”

In the weeks leading as a lot as her death on Jan. 12 at age 54, Lisa Marie and Priscilla, 77, had gave the influence end at diverse events whereas celebrating Baz Luhrmann’s Oscar-nominated Elvis biopic. But more than one sources assert the two were barely talking, and their relationship had been fractured since Lisa Marie’s ruin up from Michael, 61, in 2016.

Priscilla presley, Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough; Lisa Marie and her kids.

After the breakup, the exes were embroiled in a defective custody fight over the twins that lasted until October of closing yr. Chums assert Lisa Marie resented that Priscilla sided with Michael, and the stress trickled down to Riley, 33. (Her dad is Lisa Marie’s first husband, singer Danny Keough, 58.)

“Riley became once consistently on her mom’s facet when it got here to Michael,” says a Riley source. “It her that her grandmother and Michael flew to the funeral collectively.”

The simmering tension exploded four days after the memorial when lawyers for Priscilla filed a petition in Los Angeles questioning the “authenticity and validity” of a 2016 amendment to Lisa Marie’s living belief. The change had removed Priscilla and Lisa Marie’s outdated industry supervisor Barry Siegel as cotrustees and given abet watch over of the belief — the Graceland mansion and a 15 percent stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), which collectively brought in a reported $110 million in 2022 — to Riley and Lisa Marie’s son Benjamin Keough, who died by suicide at age 27 in 2020.

Riley Keough, Harper Lockwood, Lisa Marie Presley, Finley Lockwood, Priscilla Presley.
Steve Cohn/Shutterstock

Priscilla, who claims she did no longer know referring to the 2016 amendment until after Lisa Marie’s death, argued it must be voided thanks to a variety of things, including that Lisa Marie had no longer educated her of the changes as required by the phrases of the belief. But Lisa Marie’s friend claims “there’s zero demand” what her needs were: “Lisa wished Riley and Ben to be the trustees” — and for all her kids to be the beneficiaries.

Now, as they mourn, Riley and Priscilla are barely talking, in accordance with more than one sources. Says a Presley family insider: “They devise out no longer seek see to see.”

(Reps for Priscilla, Riley, Lockwood and Siegel did no longer observation for this chronicle.)

RELATED VIDEO: Priscilla Presley Eulogizes Daughter Lisa Marie Presley at Memorial Carrier: ‘Our Heart Is Broken’

The roots of the dynasty were planted in 1959 when Elvis — already a rock and roll smartly-known person — first met 14-yr-historical Military brat Priscilla whereas he became once stationed with the U.S. Military in Germany.

In 1963, 17-yr-historical Priscilla moved to Memphis; she married Elvis in 1967 and gave birth to Lisa Marie precisely nine months later. After her oldsters’ divorce in 1973, Lisa Marie moved alongside side her mom to L.A. but on a typical foundation visited her dad.

“She dominated Graceland at 6, 7 years historical,” remembers skill supervisor Jerry Schilling, a member of Elvis’ “Memphis Mafia.” “Elvis impolite her. He ragged to mutter, ‘Watch, I don’t must hoard up this cash.’ He became once identified to give reasonably a few gifts, and he did no longer specialize in longevity or historical age.”

When Elvis died from cardiac arrest in 1977 at age 42, he left within the encourage of an property worth about $5 million. His will named his father, Vernon, executor and Lisa Marie, then 9 years historical, his inheritor. Vernon died in 1979, and his will named Priscilla, his and Elvis’ longtime accountant and the National Financial institution of Commerce in Memphis as coexecutors of Elvis’ property until Lisa Marie became 25.

PEOPLE’s The Fight Over Graceland Duvet.

With mounting payments (Graceland tag $480,000 a yr to withhold) and no incoming royalties (Elvis and his supervisor, Colonel Tom Parker, had sold the rights to most of his early hits to RCA Records), Graceland confronted an unsure financial future.

“The demand I saved asking myself time and again became once, ‘What are we ever going to lift out?’ ” Priscilla recalled to the Los Angeles Times in 1989.

When the IRS imposed a $10 million inheritance tax on the property in 1981 after reappraising it at $22.5 million, Priscilla ragged the closing $500,000 of the property’s liquid property to flip Graceland into a tourist enchantment in 1982.

“The be aware on the road in Memphis became once, ‘This might possibly no longer closing for six months,'” Schilling says.

But Graceland recouped the investment in 38 days and now draws more than 500,000 guests a yr. “It be the epitome of Elvis and the American dream,” says author Martin Torgoff, an Elvis expert.

By the level Lisa Marie became 25 in 1993, the property’s cost topped $100 million. (Origin in 1983, EPE became once in a position to form extra profits from memorabilia and licensing charges; EPE moreover signed a take care of RCA within the ’90s entitling the property to royalties from packaged anthologies of Elvis’ song.)

She fashioned the Waddle Belief to abet watch over the property, with Priscilla and the National Financial institution of Commerce as cotrustees.

“The whole lot remains the an analogous, excluding I’m on the administration workers now,” Lisa Marie educated PEOPLE in 1993, noting that Priscilla had carried out “an foremost job” of managing her worth range.

RELATED VIDEO: Lisa Marie Presley Ineffective at 54

When Lisa Marie launched her song occupation in 2003, she appointed her industry supervisor Barry Siegel as a cotrustee with Priscilla. Decrease than two years into his role, Siegel sold 85 percent of the belief’s interests in EPE, which became once silent worth around $100 million.

By 2015 the belief became once left with fully $14,000 in cash and mountains of debt, leading to Lisa Marie’s lawsuit against Siegel in 2018 for mismanagement of her belief. She alleged that Siegel had given Priscilla an annual wage of $900,000, even when she had no ownership or educated house in EPE. (She and Siegel settled for an undisclosed quantity out of court.)

As Lisa Marie’s worth range and her marriage to Lockwood crumbled (she had previously been married to Keough, Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage), so did her relationship with Priscilla.

“I’m succesful of notify you, within the closing seven years of Lisa’s lifestyles, she under no circumstances discussed with Priscilla any industry,” her friend maintains, adding that earlier than Benjamin’s death, Lisa Marie had “inquired on more than one occasions what it might probably probably possibly exhaust” to grab encourage more of a stake in EPE.

“She wished each and each of her four kids to have5 percent of the property,” says the friend.

Finley Lockwood, Lisa Marie Presley, Riley Keough, Benjamin Keough and Harper Lockwood.
Lisa Marie Presley Instagram

If the 2016 amendment is voided in court, Priscilla and Riley would be cotrustees.

“Priscilla would no longer need Riley fully in tag, attributable to then she has no assert,” says the family insider. “In the meantime, Riley would no longer need Priscilla to butt in.”

Adds the Riley source: “It be a extraordinarily sad disaster. Riley is very a lot surprised Priscilla is contesting the amendment.”

Priscilla Presley and Riley Keough.
Michael Kovac/Getty

In a Feb. 3 commentary, Priscilla maintained she is acting with “integrity and revel in,” and a Lockwood source says the matriarch remains end to Michael to “be a share of her grandchildren’s lives.”

With a court listening to scheduled for April 13, sources assert Riley is centered on her acting occupation — she stars in Amazon High Video’s new shrimp series Daisy Jones & the Six — and Elvis’ first good-grandchild. At her mom’s memorial, Riley’s stuntman husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, revealed that that they had had their first slight one in 2022.

“Lisa Marie’s death has been very painful for Riley, but welcoming her toddler girl has been contented,” says the Riley source. “[Her] daughter brings her joy. She loves being a mom.”

In the meantime, Priscilla has co-created Netflix’s Agent Elvis, an inviting series that debuts March 17, and she’s the subject of an upcoming biopic directed by Sofia Coppola.

Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough.
Eric Charbonneau/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

As Priscilla and Riley vie for abet watch over of Elvis’ financial legacy, Schilling hopes to hunt one share of the mythology stay intact.

“I would cherish for Graceland itself to discontinue as it has for the closing forty five years, as a portion of history captured in time,” he says. “I would cherish to hunt it as Elvis left it, as he embellished it, for the generations of Presley kids. It be the White Rental of rock and roll.”

— Reporting by Lanae Brody, Pernilla Cedenheim, Marissa Charles, Melody Chiu, Rachel DeSantis and Liz McNeil.

To your total particulars on the fight over Graceland, plan pack up this week’s disclose of PEOPLE, on newsstands in all locations Friday.