How problematic was Priscilla Presley for Lisa Marie?

Since Priscilla Presley has filed legal documents to challenge the estate of Lisa Marie Presley, the ex-wife of music legend Elvis Presley has dismissed suggestions that there’s a family rift or that there was anything but “love” between her and her late daughter.

Sources close to Lisa Marie Presley have offered a different view, saying that the singer, who died Jan. 12 of cardiac arrest at age 54, had been “basically estranged” from her mother for the previous eight years, the New York Post reported. “Lisa didn’t want to have anything to do with her mom,” a source told the Post.

Another source told “Entertainment Tonight” that Lisa Marie Presley always felt that her mother “was trying to have control over her. … They did not have a healthy or close relationship and it was very complicated.”

The “ET” source acknowledged that tensions between the mother and daughter were exacerbated by Lisa Marie’s widely reported struggles. They included money troubles, her addiction to prescription painkillers, her bitter divorce from fourth husband Michael Lockwood and her crippling grief over the 2020 suicide of her 27-year-old son Benjamin Keough.

In fact, Benjamin’s death left Lisa Marie Presley a recluse who rarely left her home, TMZ reported this week. Having put on weight during the COVID-19 lockdown, she “freaked out” when she realized that she’d be in the spotlight during Oscars season to help promote “Elvis,” the Austin Butler-led movie based on her father’s life. To look her best at awards shows, she went on a dramatic weight loss program, shedding up to 50 pounds in the weeks before the Golden Globe Awards, TMZ said. The stress of being in the spotlight also may have prompted her to start abusing opioids again, TMZ added.

But even as Lisa Marie Presley made public appearances with her mother to promote “Elvis,” the issues between them remained a factor, reports said. “At the Golden Globes, they were made to sit together by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” a source told the New York Post. “Lisa didn’t even go with Priscilla. … The HFP pushed (mother and daughter) together.”

In an interview conducted in 2015 but published after her death, Lisa Marie Presley herself shared how her problematic relationship with Priscilla went back to her childhood, after her father’s 1977 death at age 42 and as her mother forced her to join the Church of Scientology.

Lisa Marie Presley told journalist Tony Ortega for his The Underground Bunker Substack that her mother, grieving her father’s death, was lured into the controversial organization by John Travolta. Priscilla Presley also was trying to deal with Lisa Marie acting out, so she started to drop her off at Scientology facilities to undergo its “purification rundown” and to be indoctrinated into the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard, former high-ranking Scientology member Karen de la Carriere said in an interview last month.

While Priscilla Presley was considered to be an important “get” for Scientology, and treated with deference as a major celebrity, Lisa Marie was treated shabbily and as an afterthought, Ortega reported. “My mom was always trying to figure out what to do with me,” Lisa Marie Presley told Ortega. “I had watches on me. I thought at one point that I wanted to join the Sea Org just to get out of my mom’s house.”

In the hierarchy of Scientology, the Sea Organization is the elite inner corps of dedicated church workers. Lisa Marie Presley must have felt “pretty desperate” to get away from her mother to even consider joining Sea Org, which requires signing a billion-year contract and the promise of working 365 days a year for $25 per week, Ortega reported.

Lisa Marie Presley’s status in the organization grew immensely when she turned 25 and she qualified to get her inheritance from her father’s estate, Ortega reported. “At 25, after I got the inheritance, they started grooming me to be this person who would go out and get everyone else in,” Lisa Marie told Ortega.

Lisa Marie Presley told Ortega she began to pull away from the organization after reading news accounts and learning through acquaintances about some of the organization’s controversial practices. They included reports that leader David Miscavige instituted harsh punishments for underlings suspected of disloyalty and that Scientologists were expected to cut off contact with family members who defected. After a showdown with Scientology officials in 2014, Lisa Marie said she left the organization for good and managed to take Priscilla and her daughter Riley out with her. “They walked when I did,” Lisa Marie told Ortega. Ortega said that a representative for the Church of Scientology did not respond to his requests for comment about Lisa Marie’s purported experience with the organization.

Leaving Scientology apparently didn’t ease Lisa Marie Presley’s relationship with her mother. Meanwhile, her marriage to Lockwood, with whom she shared twin daughters Harper and Finley, began to fail. She filed for divorce in 2016, and a messy custody fight erupted. Through all this, Lisa Marie later revealed, she had been struggling with an addiction to opioids, which began in 2008 when she received a prescription to manage pain after the birth of her daughters.

Lisa Marie Presley also was bedeviled by money issues that involved her mother and were related to the management of Elvis Presley Enterprises, the company that manages the Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee, and the worldwide licensing of Elvis-related products and ventures. In 2018, Lisa Marie sued her former business manager for “negligently” mishandling her money, Page Six reported. 

One of Lisa Marie’s complaints is that Barry Siegel had “allowed (and, in fact, lobbied)” for her mother to receive $900,000 a year from Elvis Presley Enterprises despite having no stake in the company and not performing any executive-level work for the company.

“Siegel failed to disclose these facts to Lisa and he did not negotiate the same salary benefit for Lisa,” the complaint stated, according to Page Six. The case dragged on for another two years before it was settled out of court.

A source told Page Six that Priscilla Presley’s move to gain control of her daughter’s trust is nothing more than a “money grab.” Priscilla Presley made the move four days after Lisa Marie’s public memorial service at Graceland on Jan. 22.  In  documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Priscilla asked a judge to invalidate a recently discovered 2016 document. The “purported amendment” to the trust said that Lisa Marie wanted to replace her and her former manager Siegel as co-trustees of her trust with her children, Riley and her brother Benjamin Keough. With Benjamin’s death in 2020, Riley, 33, would be left as the sole trustee of her mother’s estate, according to the 2016 amendment.

A source told Entertainment Tonight that it was “no secret” that Lisa Marie Presley always wanted her children to inherit her trust. Her 14-year-old twins, Harper and Finley, also would be beneficiaries. “Lisa Marie’s children meant the world to her, and she would do anything for them,” the source said.

It’s been reported that Lisa Marie Presley died with $4 million in debt and had multiple life insurance policies, with one set to pay out $25 million and the other $10 million, Entertainment Tonight said.