The Secret Amendment | Lisa Marie Presley Estate | E6 | Volume l

Welcome to Celebrity Estate Interrupted — the special series from Wealth, War & Real Estate where The Oracle and The Architect open the vault on the celebrity estates that changed the law, divided families, and left fortunes in the hands of courtrooms instead of the people they were built for.

She updated her trust. She named her daughter as trustee. She signed the amendment in 2016.

She just never delivered it to anyone.

In Episode 6 of Celebrity Estate Interrupted, The Oracle and The Architect open the case of Lisa Marie Presley — the last Presley, the heir to Graceland, and the woman whose trust amendment sat unsigned in a drawer for seven years while the person it removed had no idea it existed. The amendment that triggered a war between a grandmother and a granddaughter. The settlement that ended it. And the one communication step that would have prevented every moment of it.

What we cover: What The Promenade Trust was — and why Lisa Marie updated it in 2016 Why the amendment was never delivered to Priscilla — and what that single failure cost the family The settlement between Priscilla Presley and Riley Keough — the $1 million, the $100K per year, and the burial rights at Graceland What happened to the estate — and how Riley Keough became the sole trustee The communication requirement that every trust amendment must include The one action every woman needs to take this week

The 20-year question:
Does everyone who needs to know about your estate plan actually know about it — or are there amendments sitting in a drawer that nobody has ever received?

Celebrity Estate Interrupted Volume I — new episodes every Wednesday at 5AM through August 5, 2026.

Hosted by Alexis Nassif, DRE# 00778778, CIPS, Broker Associate at Compass · Dame Natalie Francinne, KM · AN & Associates Luxury Real Estate Group at Compass · Studio City, CA · wealthwarandrealestate.com

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Presented by Alexis Nassif, DRE# 00778778, CIPS & Dame Natalie Francinne, KM

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

The document she changed and never discussed. She had a trust, she had an estate plan, she had Graceland. She changed one document in 2016 and never told her mother, Priscilla Presley, found out after her daughter died. One conversation, one single conversation would have prevented everything that followed.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Lisa Marie Presley died on January 12, 2023, at the age of 54. She had a trust. She had been managing the Elvis Presley estate for decades. She owned Graceland. She had an estate plan that was restated and updated in 2010. And in March 2016, seven years before she died, she signed an amendment to that trust that removed her mother, Priscilla, as co-trustee and never told her. When Lisa Marie died, Priscilla challenged the amendment. A granddaughter and a grandmother went to war over the most famous private home in America. The settlement cost Riley Keogh $1.4 million. One conversation, one phone call, one family meeting, one honest discussion while Lisa Marie was alive and able to explain her reasoning would have prevented every dollar of it. January 8th, 1935, Elvis Aaron Presley is born in Tuppelow, Mississippi, a two-room shotgun house, a twin brother who did not survive, a mother who became the center of his world. March 19, 1957, Elvis purchases Graceland, a colonial revival mansion on 14 acres in Memphis, Tennessee, for $102,500. He's 22 years old. He has been famous for less than two years. He moves in immediately. His parents move in with him. August 16th, 1977, Elvis Presley dies at Graceland. He's 42 years old. He is found unresponsive in his bathroom. The cause of death is cardiac arrhythmia. His daughter, Lisa Marie, is nine years old. Under the terms of his will, which had been updated just months earlier, everything passes to a trust for Lisa Marie's benefit, administered by her grandfather, Vernon Presley, and her mother, Priscilla Presley, until Lisa Marie turns 25. That nine-year-old girl inherited Graceland. Lisa Marie Presley grew up understanding that she was not just Elvis Presley's daughter. She was the custodian of a legacy. She was the person responsible for deciding what happened to the home where her father was buried, to the meditation garden where his parents and his grandmother and eventually his grandson Benjamin were also laid to rest. She watched her mother, Priscilla, build Graceland into one of the most visited private homes in the world. It was Priscilla who had the idea to open Graceland to the public in 1982, five years after Elvis died, when the estate was running out of money. It was Priscilla's vision, Priscilla's relationships, Priscilla's decades of work that turned Graceland from a financial burden into an institution. And in 2016, Lisa Marie signed a document that removed Priscilla from the trust and never said a word about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I'm Alexis Nassif. In 45 years of California real estate, I have watched families tear apart, be torn apart over estate documents that were executed correctly but communicated poorly. The Lisa Marie Presley case is the most high-profile version of that story, but I have seen it in estates worth $500,000. The amount of money does not determine the damage. The silence does.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Wow. You were going crazy. Exactly. Oh my. Well, I was seven when he passed. Okay. True crime moment. No, I have a story about it. True crime moment. When Lisa Marie Presley turned 25 in 1993, she received full control of her inheritance from Elvis. It was not a simple inheritance. It was one of the most complex celebrity estates in American history. Elvis Presley Enterprises held the right to Elvis' name, image, and likeness, generating millions annually in licensing revenue. Graceland, the mansion, and its 14 acres, was a separate asset held personally by Lisa Marie. The Promenade Trust was created in 1993 to hold these assets and manage their distribution. Lisa Marie became both the beneficiary and the primary trustee of her own legacy. She was 25 years old and responsible for the commercial future of her father's name.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

The Promenade Trust held extraordinary assets. She sold 85% of Elvis Presley's enterprises to Robert F.X. Sillerman, who approximately $100 million the sale gave her immediate liquidity and reduced her ongoing ownership stake in her father's commercial enterprises to only 15%. She retained full personal ownership of Graceland. That was the line she would not cross.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Graceland was never going to be sold. Lisa Marie was clear about that throughout her life, whatever financial pressures arose, and there were significant ones, including a period in the late 2000s when her finances were under serious strain. Graceland was not negotiable. It was where her father was buried, where she grew up, where she would eventually be buried herself, alongside her son Benjamin, who died in 2020. The Promenade Trust was the legal structure that held the last pieces of the Elvis Presley estate that were still in family hands. It was not just a financial instrument, it was a container of a dynasty.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

In 2010, Lisa Marie had the Promenade Trust completely restated. A restatement is a comprehensive upgrade, update that replaces the original trust document while maintaining the trust's legal existence. It is more thorough than an amendment. It essentially rewrites the entire document. The 2010 reinstatement, oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Restatement named two co-trustees alongside Lisa Marie, her mother Priscilla Presley, and her former business manager Barry Siegel. Go ahead. This made sense at the time. Priscilla had managed the Elvis estate for decades. She had relationships with every significant party. She understood the archive, the licensing, the commercial operations of Graceland. Having her as co-trustee gave the trust continuity and institutional knowledge that no outside party could replicate. But by 2018, the relationship between Lisa Marie and both co-trustees had deteriorated significantly. She sued Barry Siegel for negligence and mismanagement in a $100 million lawsuit, alleging that his handling of her finances had cost her more of her inheritance from the 2005 sale. That lawsuit was eventually settled. The relationship was opened. And somewhere in that period between 2015 and 2016, her relationship with her mother, Priscilla, had also shifted. The specifics of that shift are private. What is not private is what Lisa Marie did about it. And there's the war. The Promenade Trust was the legal vehicle for everything the Presley family had built and preserved over four decades. It held Graceland, it held the archive, it held the commercial relationships that kept Elvis Presley's name alive as a cultural and financial force. The trustee of that structure had extraordinary power. Power over decisions that affected not just the family, but the thousands of people who worked in the Graceland ecosystem and the millions who visited every year. Who held that power mattered enormously. Lisa Marie understood that, and in March 2016, she made a decision about it. March 11, 2016, Lisa Marie Presley signs a document described as an amendment to the Promenade Trust. The amendment makes two significant changes. It removes Priscilla Presley and Barry Siegel as co-trustees, and it names two new trustees in their place. Lisa Marie's eldest daughter, Riley Keogh, and her son Benjamin Keogh. The amendment is legally executed. It is signed. It appears to comply with the formal requirements for a trust amendment. And it is never delivered to Priscilla Presley. Not in 2016, not in 2017, not in 2018, 19, 2021, or 22. Priscilla Presley does not know the amendment exists. January 12, 2023, Lisa Marie Presley suffers a cardiac arrest at her Los Angeles home. She is rushed to the hospital. She dies. She is 54 years old. Her cause of death is later determined to be complications from bariatric surgery. She had undergone years earlier adhesions that had developed as a known long-term complication of the procedure. Within weeks of her death, Priscilla Presley's attorneys file a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court. They have discovered the 2016 amendment. And Priscilla, who had no knowledge that she had been removed as co-trustee seven years earlier, is now challenging it.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Priscilla's attorney stated in the filing that there were many issues surrounding the authenticity and validity of the purported 2016 amendment. They noted that Priscilla had never received the amendment during Lisa Marie's lifetime, which under the terms of the trust agreement may have been a legal requirement. They questioned whether the amendment had been properly executed. Riley Keho, Lisa Marie's eldest daughter, Elvis' granddaughter, 33 years old at the time her mother's death, was now in legal battle with her own grandmother over Graceland, over the trust that held the last pieces of Elvis Presley's legacy, over a document her mother had signed seven years earlier and never mentioned. Did not have the talk or conversation.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Well, I guess if she felt that she had to have her mother removed, that why would she tell her, right? That's true. The press covered this as a war between Priscilla and Riley. Grandmother against granddaughter, old guard against new generation. That framing is wrong. And both Priscilla and Riley said so publicly throughout the entire proceeding. Priscilla said we were never not on good terms. That was all publicity, Riley said. She's just been my grandma. None of that stuff has ever been a part of our relationship. What Priscilla was challenging was a document, not her granddaughter, not the relationship, a legal document that affected her rights and that she had never been told about.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Because the instinct, when you hear this story, is to blame someone, to assign fault. But the fault in this case is not malice or greed or family dysfunction. The fault is silence. Lisa Marie Presley had every legal right to remove her mother as co-trustee. That was her trust. Those were her assets. She could designate whoever she chose. The question is not whether she had the right to make that change. The question is why she made it in silence and what that silence cost.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Lot, absolutely. True crime moment. In May 2023, four months after Lisa Marie's death, Priscilla and Riley announced they had reached a settlement. In August 2023, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge formally approved Riley Keogh as the sole trustee of the Promenade Trust and Lisa Marie's estate. Riley now owns Graceland. She now controls that last, the last pieces of the Elvis Presley legacy still in family hands. The settlement terms. Riley pays Priscilla $1 million as a lump sum. Riley pays $400,000 in Priscilla's legal fees. The cost of the silence $1.4 million. Plus months of litigation. Plus the public spectacle of a grandmother and granddaughter in Los Angeles courtroom over a document one of them had never seen. Priscilla also received the right to be buried at Graceland when she dies in the location closest to Elvis without moving any existing grave sites. Riley said of that provision, I don't know why she wouldn't be buried at Graceland. I don't understand what the drama in the news was about. She's family. It was about the document. The document Lisa Marie signed in 2016 and never mentioned to anyone.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

And the war. A trust amendment is a legal document. It has specific requirements. It must be properly executed. It must be delivered to the relevant parties as required by the trust's own terms. And it must be communicated to the people whose rights it affects. A trust amendment that is signed but never discussed is a legal time bomb. It sits in a file. The person who signed it knows what it says. The people affected by it have no idea. And the moment the person who signed it dies, the bomb detonates. Lisa Marie had every right to make that the change she made. The silence was a mistake that cost $1.4 million.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Before I give you the specific steps, I want to address something honestly because I hear the question in the room. If the answer is so obvious, just tell the people the document effects. Why do so many people not do it? The answer is almost all always one of three things. The first is avoidance. Having the conversation means confronting a relationship that has become difficult. It means explaining a decision that the other person may not agree with. It means sitting across from your mother and telling her that you have decided she should no longer have a role in managing your estate. That is not a comfortable conversation. Many people choose the document over the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yep, that's true. The second reason is the belief that it will not matter. People sign amendments when they are healthy, when they are thinking clearly, when they believe that they have decades ahead of them. Lisa Marie was 46 when she signed the 2016 amendment. She died at 54. Eight years, she almost certainly believed, as most of us do, that she had time, that the conversation would happen later, that there was no urgency. The third reason is privacy. Some people genuinely believe that their estate plan is private, that they are not obligated to explain their decisions to anyone. And legally, in most circumstances, they are right. You are not legally required to tell your family what your trust says. But the cost of that privacy, as the Lisa Marie Presley case demonstrates, can be measured in months of litigation, seven figures of, and seven figures of legal fees. Absolutely. When you amend your trust, there are legal requirements that are practical requirements. Here are both.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Questions. This is the most important thing I will say in this episode. You do not owe anyone an agreement. You do not have to justify your decisions. You simply have to make them in the open. A conversation, even a difficult one, costs nothing. The silence costs $1.4 million.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Practical requirement too: update your attorney's records and give them a copy. Your estate planning attorney should have the most current version of every trust document. If you signed an amendment without your attorney's involvement, send them a copy immediately. Their file should reflect what your trust actually says today, not what it said three years ago.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Practical requirement number three: review your entire plan holistically when you make any change. A trust amendment does not exist in isolation. When you change your trustee, review your power of attorney. Does it reference the old trustee? Review your health care directive, your letter of instruction, any other documents that may reference the person you've just removed. Update everything simultaneously so there is no contradiction between documents.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Practical requirement four, put a date and a reason in your records. Not in the legal document, that is your attorney's job, but in your own records, in a letter to your attorney, in a communication to your new trustee. Note when you made that change and why, not for legal purposes, for human purposes, so that the people who come after you understand what you intended and why. So important. It is.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Practical requirement number five. If you cannot have the conversation in person, write the letter. Lisa Marie could not tell her mother face to face that she was removing her as trustee. That conversation may have felt impossible. If it felt impossible, she could have written a letter, kept it with the trust documents, given it to her attorney to be delivered upon her death, along with the amendment. Something that said, Mom, I made this change because I needed to. It would not have prevented grief, it would have prevented the litigation.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

And here's the war.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

The most expensive sentence in estate planning is I'll tell them later. Lisa Marie Presley changed her trust in 2016. She died in 2023, seven years of later, and the conversation never happened. The people who love you most deserve to understand your wishes while you are here to explain them, not after you are gone and they are in a courtroom arguing about the document they have never seen. Have the conversation, write the letter, do something. The silence is never worth what it costs. Priscilla Presley dedicated her life to preserving what Elvis built. She opened Graceland to the world. She built the institution. She turned 14 acres in Memphis into one of the most visited private properties in America. She did it because she loved Elvis. She did it because she wanted the world to know who he was beyond the music. She found out she had been removed as trustee of that institution from a legal petition filed after her daughter died. That is not legal failure. Lisa Marie's trust was properly structured. The amendment was legally executed. The assets were ultimately distributed according to Lisa Marie's wishes. The law worked. What failed was a conversation that never happened.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Briley Kehoe said something after the settlement that I want to read back to you because it is the most important thing anyone said throughout this entire proceedings. She said, When my mom passed, there was a lot of chaos in every aspect of our lives. Everything felt like the carpet had been ripped out and the floor had been melted from under us. Everyone in a bit of a bit of a panic to understand how we move forward. And it just took a minute to understand the details of the situation because it was complicated. Complicated. It has been oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

It did not have to be one conversation while Lisa Marie was alive, and the complexity disappears. The floor does not melt, the carpet does not get ripped out. The family grieves together instead of litigating separately.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Yeah, this is making me very tongue-tied. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Your action from this episode. Think about your estate plan right now. Think about the last time you made any change to it, a new trustee, a new beneficiary, a new provision. Did you tell the people that change affected? And if the answer is no, pick up the phone this week. Have the conversation, write the letter, do something that ensures the people you love are not discovering your intentions for the first time after you're gone.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

The 20-year question for this week: if you have made any change to your trust, your will, your beneficiary designations in the last five years, have you told the people those changes affect? Not your attorney, the people, the ones who will discover those documents after you are gone. And if not, what are you waiting for?

SPEAKER_00 28:41

I am Natalie Francine. This is Celebrity Estate Interrupted.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

I'm Alexis Nassauf. This is Wealth, War, and Real Estate for Women by Women.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

And men too.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

See you next time.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Bye bye.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Thank you for joining us. Thank you. I don't know. Thank you for uh being a part of this and subscribe. Yes, please.