Weekend Argus (Sunday Edition)
Elvis’s broke daughter in debt duel
LISA Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley, says she is facing financial ruin and has filed a $100 million (R1.16 billion) lawsuit accusing her former business manager of negligence and mismanaging her finances.
Barry Siegel has filed his own lawsuit, accusing Presley, 50, of squandering her famous father’s inheritance because of her lavish lifestyle. The lawsuit seeks $800 000 in unpaid bills.
The duelling lawsuits, filed earlier this week in Los Angeles, follow the collapse in 2016 of Presley’s fourth marriage and her announcement that she was $16m in debt.
Presley was just 9 years old when Elvis died in 1977, leaving her his sole heir. Her affairs have been managed by Siegel since 1993, when she came into her inheritance.
Her lawsuit said Presley’s “11-year odyssey to financial ruin” began in 2005 and alleged as result of Siegel’s actions, “Lisa has been damaged in an amount that has not yet been fully ascertained but is believed to be in excess of $100m”.
The 2005 deal she was referring to involved income from Elvis’s home Graceland and his intellectual property rights.
The lawsuit said by 2016, the trust was left with $14 000 in cash and over $500 000 in credit card debt.
Siegel’s lawsuit said Lisa Marie had “twice squandered” her inheritance and she had repeatedly been told to curb “her spendthrift ways”.
Siegel’s attorney, Leon Gladstone, said on Friday the 2005 deal Presley was complaining about “cleared up over $20m in debts Lisa had incurred and netted her over $40m cash and a multimillion-dollar income stream, most of which she managed to squander in the ensuing years.”
“It’s clear Lisa Marie is going through a difficult time in her life and looking to blame others instead of taking responsibility for her actions,” Gladstone said. – Reuters