Left: Riley Keough attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" exhibition on Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP). Right: Visitors get ready to tour Graceland in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz, File).
Elvis Presley's granddaughter has filed a last-minute lawsuit that would stop Presley's iconic Graceland home from being sold at a foreclosure sale on the steps of a Memphis courthouse on May 23, 2024. The King of rock 'n' roll's granddaughter sued what she called "a false entity" for trying to force the foreclosure sale based on forged documents purporting to bear the signature of her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley.
According to an official notice, Graceland is set to be auctioned off for cash to the highest bidder on the Shelby County Courthouse steps on May 23. The notice comes almost a year to the date after Priscilla Presley and the estate of Lisa Marie Presley reportedly reached a settlement of their lawsuit over control of the property.
Graceland is a 13-acre residence in Memphis, Tennessee, that was transformed into a major tourist destination that boasts annual visitors numbering over 600,000. In addition to the home in which Presley lived, the property includes a massive collection of memorabilia and sits across the street from several museum-style Elvis-themed attractions. Elvis, his daughter Lisa Marie, and Lisa Marie's son Benjamin Keough who died by suicide at age 27 in 2020, are buried next to each other on the Graceland property.
Lisa Marie's daughter, Danielle Riley Keough, 34, known professionally as Riley Keough, is a Golden Globe and Emmy nominated actor and the star of the recent hit series Daisy Jones & the Six. The series, an adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel of the same name, is loosely based on the infamous history of 1970s rock band Fleetwood Mac. Keough played the titular role in the series, which featured her performing a number of original songs.
After Lisa Marie Presley died suddenly in January 2023, her assets were held in a living trust which named her mother Priscilla and her former business partner Barry Siegel as co-trustees. The trust proved to be problematic in that a 2016 amendment shifted control to Benjamin and Riley — Lisa Marie's two children.
However, because Benjamin predeceased his mother, the legal effect of the amendment would transfer control solely to Riley as the sole surviving trustee. After Lisa Marie died, Priscilla filed a petition contesting the validity of the 2016 amendment and asking that she and Siegel be revived as co-trustees to conform with the earlier version of the trust.
During her lifetime, Lisa Marie was entangled in legal battles with Siegel, including one in which she sued him for squandering her massive inheritance via her famous father. Siegel counterclaimed and said that it had actually been Lisa Marie who mismanaged her own funds. The two appeared to have settled their disputes before Lisa Marie's sudden death, though no official court records were ever disclosed.
On May 16, 2023, lawyers for Lisa Marie's estate told a Los Angeles judge that the family dispute over the trust has been resolved, but no specific terms were made public.
One year later, on May 15, 2024, Riley filed a 61-page complaint in state court in Tennessee against Missouri company Naussany Investments and Private Lending and an individual named Kurt Naussany.
In the complaint, Keough said that Naussany Investments showed "fraudulent documents" that purported to show that her mother borrowed $3.8 million, using Graceland as security for a loan that Naussany now seeks to foreclose upon. Keough said Naussany "is not a real entity" and was formed simply to defraud the trust that owns Graceland.
Keough said her mother never borrowed $3.8 million and never put Graceland up as security. Her complaint included copies of notarized documents purporting to show Lisa Marie's signature and asserted, "these documents are forgeries."
Two of the pages Keough is contesting can be seen below.
Images via court documents
The complaint also contains an affidavit signed by Kimberly Philbrick as an additional exhibit. Philbrick is the notary public listed on the loan documents attesting to Lisa Marie Presley's signature, but she says she did not actually notarize the document.
"I have never met Lisa Marie Presley, nor have I ever notarized a document signed by Lisa Marie Presley," Philbrick said in her affidavit. "I do not know why my signature appears on this document."
You can read the full complaint here.