Priscilla Presley got $1.4 million dollar settlement from Lisa Marie’s estate
Riley Keough and Priscilla Presley’s lawyers came to a settlement agreement over Lisa Marie Presley’s estate. LM had changed her will a few times in the decade before she passed, and she had always made it abundantly clear that she wanted her eldest children, Riley and Ben Keough, to inherit and execute her estate. Ben passed away in 2020, so Riley was supposed to be the executor and trustee.
Except Priscilla took her granddaughter to court and challenged Lisa Marie’s will, just weeks after LM’s passing. Last month, we only knew that there had been some kind of settlement. This week, the terms of the deal were revealed in court documents, and the NYT (per People) read through the entire filing and figured out how much Riley had to give her grandmother to get Priscilla to back off.
As Riley Keough becomes the sole trustee of her late mother Lisa Marie Presley’s estate, she’ll give her grandmother Priscilla Presley a $1 million lump-sum payment as part of a previous settlement reached by the pair, court documents obtained by PEOPLE seem to indicate.
Riley, 34, and Priscilla, 78, reached an agreement in May, with lawyers saying at the time that terms of the settlement would be kept confidential. And while nearly all mentions of the payment are redacted in court documents filed Monday in Los Angeles, one line deep into the 95-page filing indicates the hefty price tag.
The documents state that a $400,000 payment Riley is to give Priscilla for legal fees and costs will come “at the same time as the one million payment as stated in Paragraph 6 of this Agreement.”
The aforementioned Paragraph 6 mentions a sum to be paid to Priscilla by Riley, though the amount — which “shall be made within 10 days after Riley’s receipt of the life insurance proceeds” — is redacted. The $1 million amount was first reported by The New York Times. In return for Priscilla resigning, Riley is to issue the payment “after receiving the proceeds of her mother’s life-insurance policy,” per the docs.
Riley on Monday petitioned the court to approve the May settlement agreement, with her attorney Justin Gold writing that if it’s approved, the Daisy Jones & the Six actress won’t charge for her services as a trustee, something he says Priscilla would have done. Even so, the documents indicate that Priscilla was officially removed as Trustee of her late daughter’s estate on May 11, and that the change will remain in place whether Riley’s petition is approved or not, as Priscilla signed a settlement agreement.
I’m shocked that Priscilla settled for so little – basically $1.4 million to lay no further claim to Lisa Marie’s estate. Now, that being said, I don’t think there was a huge amount of money left. Lisa Marie had already sold off a huge chunk of her father’s estate, and reportedly there was some mismanagement with the money. I think that’s why the settlement specifies Lisa Marie’s life insurance too – that might be the only money which isn’t tangled up in the larger bureaucracy of the trust. What sucks is that I’m pretty sure Lisa Marie only had a big life insurance policy because, oh right, she passed away with minor children (twins Harper and Finley Lockwood). The life insurance money was supposed to go to LM’s children, I guarantee. Instead, Priscilla demanded her “cut.”
