The Financial Downfall Of The Presley Family Explained
Although Elvis Presley was a huge star, he didn't die with a massive fortune to his name. Per Forbes, The King had a wide-ranging lifetime earnings total somewhere between $100 million and a billion dollars. But regardless of that, he only had $5 million to his name and a mountain of debt upon his death in 1977. Despite how much money Elvis was making when he was alive on music and merchandise, he spent money almost as quickly as he made it.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Priscilla Presley wasn't involved in the family's finances while they were married. What she knew, however, was that he was always spending money. The outlet noted that Elvis would buy his friends and even strangers cars or other extravagant gifts. Upon his death, Graceland cost nearly half a million dollars a year to maintain, and his estate by 1979 was only bringing in a million per year. That's when Elvis' father Vernon died, and the family's finances fell into such dire straits that Priscilla thought they'd be broke soon.
Looking back ten years, Priscilla told The L.A. Times that she was worried primarily about her daughter and the Graceland employees. "A million things flashed through my mind," Priscilla told the outlet in 1989. "I worried about my daughter's future and about Graceland and the people who had worked for us for 20 years ... The question I kept asking myself over and over was, 'What are we ever going to do?'"
Elvis bought a ton of cars
Elvis Presley, as the King of Rock and Roll, was raking in money. Yet the musician also spent a lot, even on complete strangers. According to Elvis Cadillacs, on July 27th, 1975, he bought a whopping 14 Cadillac cars from Madison Cadillac. The website notes that The King spent $140,000 on the cars for his friends, family, and even a total stranger named Mrs. Mennie L. Person. In fact, Elvis purchased multiple Cadillacs from Madison Cadillac at once on several occasions — he bought five on September 23rd, 1974, and 11 on January 17th, 1975.
The Guardian reported in 2002 that Elvis' penchant for giving away cars even prompted a documentary titled "200 Cadillacs." Rex Fowler, who made the film, told the outlet, "It's hard to get an actual number. There are people in Elvis's inner circle who say it wasn't anything like 200. But others say it was at least that many or more. I don't think we'll ever know." Even not knowing how many Cadillacs Elvis actually purchased, just knowing the handful he bought at once means he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the cars.
Col. Tom Parker embezzled a lot of money
As the one in charge of Elvis Presley's money, his manager Colonel Tom Parker helped himself to a lot of it. Per Luxury London, Parker's estate upon his death was only worth about a million dollars. However, it is believed that he acquired over $100 million in his lifetime, the outlet added. In 1981, a probate court found Parker had committed fraud in his work with Presley.
Per the UPI archive, Parker negotiated his own separate deals with RCA Records in regard to Presley's work and defrauded the Presley estate of $2.8 million. The probate judge who oversaw the case, Joseph Evans, found the fraud shocking. "The court finds that the compensation received by Colonel Parker is excessive and shocks the conscience of the court," Evans said via UPI.
According to Luxury London, Parker was a 50/50 partner with Presley, so he was pocketing in half of all the money Presley made. It is worth noting that when Presley died, Parker owed the Hilton Hotel group at least $30 million in gambling debts, the outlet noted. The Orlando Sentinel reported that the Presley estate lost even more money after Elvis' death because Parker didn't register Presley with agents to collect royalties, ensure RCA was paying Elvis appropriately, or connect the estate with appropriate tax planners.
The Presley estate owed millions to the IRS
In 1981, the IRS announced that the estate of Elvis Presley owed over $14 million in back taxes because of errors in reporting Elvis' income, per The Memphis Commercial-Appeal via UPI. At the time the IRS stated that the tax returns related to the state did not list all money made by the various businesses before and after Elvis' death, the outlet noted.
Looking back at those slim days after Presley's death, attorney C. Barry Ward told The Memphis Daily News in 2007 that they were hard times. "The estate was desperate for money from 1977 to 1981," Ward told the outlet. "They were flat broke and couldn't pay the federal estate taxes." It wasn't until a court determined that the estate had the rights to Elvis' right of publicity that finances started to turn for the Presley family. That court case was huge for entertainment law, the outlet added.
Attorney Bill Bradley told the outlet that securing publicity rights was huge for the estate. "From a legal perspective, the biggest thing Elvis did, he propelled state law of the right of publicity into a major source of income for the estate," Bradley told The Memphis Daily News.
Lisa Marie had millions in debt
Although Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie Presley inherited $100 million from the Presley estate, she lost a lot of it because of a bad manager and poor business decisions, according to Yahoo. Lisa Marie's financial woes were so significant that when she died in 2023, she had a net worth of only $4 million — and she also owed the IRS $2.5 million.
Inside Edition reported that in 2018 Lisa Marie filed a lawsuit against her business manager, Barry Siegel. Siegel had blown Lisa Marie's inheritance from the Presley estate and she only had about $14,000 to her name, the outlet noted. During a countersuit, Siegel issued a statement which read in part, "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. The 2005 deal she is complaining about now cleared up over $20 million in debts Lisa had incurred and netted her over $40 million cash and a multi-million-dollar income stream, most of which she managed to squander in the ensuing years."
Sources told TMZ in January 2023 that Lisa Marie took out two life insurance policies, one equating to $25 million and the other for $10 million. Those sources also told the outlet that she may have had a third active policy for $10 million. Further, the sources told TMZ that Lisa Marie hoped the policies could help cover some of her debt.
Riley Keough and Pricilla Presley were tied up in an estate dispute
Following the death of Lisa Marie Presley, there was a lot of talk about what her three daughters would inherit. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Lisa Marie had very little left of what she inherited from her father's estate. Even so, the outlet explained, her living children would likely inherit the rights to Graceland, things that belonged to Presley, and his music/film property rights. But how the estate of Lisa Marie would be divided created division within the family.
Lisa Marie's eldest daughter, Riley Keough, came into a dispute with Priscilla Presley over estate rights, which reached a conclusion in November 2023. A judge ruled that Priscilla would receive a million dollars out of Lisa Marie's life insurance and that she could be buried next to Elvis upon her death, reported People. The outlet notes that in addition to the million-dollar lump sum payment, Priscilla would receive $100,000 per year for ten years or until her death to act as a special advisor for Elvis Presley Enterprises.
In May 2023, as the dispute was still ongoing but reaching some conclusion, an insider told Us Weekly about how the two women were faring. "Riley and Priscilla are at peace in their relationship after the very stressful ordeal over Lisa Marie's trust and estate," the insider told the outlet. "There was a lot of back and forth, but they reached a middle ground that makes them both happy."