Priscilla Presley has had her settlement with granddaughter Riley Keough, concerning her daughter Lisa Marie Presley’s estate, approved by the courts.
The settlement states that Priscilla can now be buried as close to her ex-husband Elvis Presley as possible at the Graceland estate when she dies, and that her son Navarone Garibaldi can participate in the memorial ceremony.
“Riley agrees to allow Priscilla to be buried upon her death in the Meditation Garden of Graceland. The burial location will be at the location closest to Elvis Presley without moving any existing gravesite,” reads the official settlement.
As reported by Rolling Stone, the agreement has been confirmed in a probate court in Los Angeles County, and signed off by a judge, thereby avoiding a potentially long and costly legal battle.
In addition, Priscilla is set to receive a $1 million (£810,000) payment from Lisa-Marie’s $25 million (£20.2 million) life insurance trust, as well as $100,000 a year for the next ten years for her services as “special advisor” to Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc.
The settlement further states that Keough “agrees to use her best efforts to ask Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc., or any successor thereof, not to pursue litigation against Priscilla related to her name, image and likeness.”
The conflict between Priscilla and actor Keough arose around the sudden death of Lisa Marie Presley in January this year, which threw the inheritance of the Presley estate into question. Lisa Marie, as the only child, had become the sole inheritor following Elvis’ death, although the site was also managed by Priscilla.
When the trust was dissolved in 1993 on Lisa Marie’s 25th birthday, she formed a new trust, which also retained her mother as manager of the estate and co-trustee. However, earlier this year, Priscilla Presley filed a legal challenge disputing the validity of daughter Lisa Marie‘s will, after it was reportedly altered in 2016 to remove Priscilla and a former business manager, Barry Siegel, as trustees.
Priscilla Presley’s life has been dramatised in the new film Priscilla, directed by Sofia Coppola. The film will receive its UK cinema release on January 1.
It was reported this week that Lisa Marie Presley had sent two emails to Coppola asking her to revise the script for the film before she died. Elvis’ only daughter had claimed that the film portrayed her father as “a predator and manipulative”, describing the script as “shockingly vengeful and contemptuous”.
Elvis was 24 when he began his relationship with Priscilla, who was 14. However, in September, Priscilla stated that she “never had sex” with the singer at that age.
Speaking at the Venice Film Festival, she said: “Even though I was 14, I was actually a little bit older in life – not in numbers. That was the attraction. People think, ‘Oh, it was sex.’ No, it wasn’t. I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old. We were more in line in thought, and that was our relationship.”
In a four-star review of Priscilla, NME wrote: “It’s fascinating to watch the story unfold from Priscilla’s perspective, since Elvis has largely been portrayed in a positive light on screen until now, and there are aspects of their relationship that are likely to surprise anyone not previously familiar with her life story.”
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