Cher says son Elijah Blue is missing and will spend money on drugs
Showbiz legend Cher has lost contact with her drug-addled son Elijah Blue Allman, she complained in new court papers filed just hours before a decision on his welfare is due to be made in court Friday.
And, she says, she fears that if Elijah is allowed full access to thousands of dollars he is due from a trust fund he will spend it all on drugs.
‘Due to severe mental health and substance abuse issues, Elijah is not currently able to manage his finances,’ Cher said in a petition to a Los Angeles court filed Thursday.
She says if he got his hands on his money ‘such funds will be immediately spent on drugs, leaving Elijah with no assets to provide for himself and putting his life at risk.’
The move by Cher, 77, is the latest in the increasingly bitter battle between the Oscar, Grammy and Emmy winner and her daughter-in-law Marieangela ‘Queeny’ King that has been simmering for years.
Elijah Blue and his wife Marieangela ‘Queeny’ King have reconciled and are now living together, King’s attorney told DailyMail.com
In September, DailyMail.com obtained photos showing a disheveled Allman outside Hollywood’s famed Chateau Marmont – where he had been living – just before he was removed by police and sent into treatment
Cher, 77, (pictured with her son in 2001) filed court papers seeking to place Elijah in a conservatorship, claiming that he is addicted to drugs and unable to manage his financial affairs
Earlier this week King claimed she had to risk her life rescuing her husband from a drug rehab center in Mexico that Cher had sent him to and the couple appealed to a court to call off their divorce.
Queeny’s attorney Regina Ratner told DailyMail.com the couple were in the process of reconciling and were now living together.
Friday’s hearing will decide whether Cher will be appointed her son’s temporary conservator until a full hearing in March.
‘The appointment of a temporary conservator is urgently needed to receive the distribution owed to Elijah so that such funds can be held and managed for his benefit,’ Cher’s lawyer Lilian Walden Givens writes.
‘There is no harm to Elijah’s estate if a temporary conservator is appointed,’ adds Givens. The temporary petition seeks to have petitioner appointed for the sole purpose of receiving distributions owed to Elijah from the trust.
‘Such distributions will be held by petitioner for Elijah’s benefit and used by petitioner to pay for Elijah’s healthcare, housing, or any other expense that may arise.’
DailyMail.com exclusively revealed in September that Allman, 47, had gone back into rehab after he passed out on the sidewalk outside the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles where he had been living.
For days before that he had been seen stumbling around the famed hotel where actor John Belushi died from a drug overdose in 1982.
‘He would come out with a full cigarette and by the time he had finished it, he would be passed out,’ one insider at the hotel told DailyMail.com at the time.
‘It always looked like it was dipped in something. He looked strung-out and messy, like he was a homeless person living on the streets.’
Cher, 77, has long had a contentious relationship both with Elijah and her daughter-in-law Marieangela (pictured together in 2018)
Marieangela blasted Cher in a public statement, claiming the pop singer ‘historically excluded’ her from decisions involving Elijah’s care
Cher says in her petition that Elijah is ‘entitled’ to money from his trust but she fears he will spend it all on drugs if he gets it
We then told how King had accused Cher of kidnapping Elijah from a New York hotel room on their wedding anniversary just as they were trying to patch up their stormy marriage.
Then earlier this week she claimed Cher had thrown Allman ‘into a lockdown facility’ in Mexico saying she had ‘historically excluded’ her from being involved in his treatment decisions.
‘I have always been a champion for the sober community and for Elijah’s sobriety,’ King, 36, said in a lengthy statement obtained by DailyMail.com.
‘I have full confidence in legitimate, ethically operated, HIPAA protected American medical establishments that offer long standing, time-tested treatment for those suffering from substance abuse or any number of mental health issues,’ she added.
‘What I am not OK with are establishments that exclude me (his wife) from being part of Elijah’s treatment and hopeful recovery.
‘I am not OK with pop-up, makeshift, unethical scam rehabs which take full advantage of families in desperate situations and seek to fraudulently exploit insurance companies for services not rendered.
‘I am especially not OK with Elijah being coerced under false pretenses on or about October 17, 2023 into participating in an alternative medicine regimen and then being thrown into a lockdown facility in Mexico, sleeping behind a locked cage with six other individuals, under an imposed Mexican Conservatorship.’
The statement issued through her record company, said: ‘It is not an exaggeration to say that Ms. King recently risked her own life to ensure her husband’s safe return back to the U.S.’
Allman married Marieangela, 36, who goes by the name Queeny in the rock band KING, in 2013. They have no children
King (pictured with Allman in 2013) released a statement criticizing mother-in-law Cher’s actions, saying she is ‘not OK’ with her husband ‘being coerced’ into ‘participating in an alternative medicine regimen’ that include sleeping in a ‘locked cage with six other individuals’
It did not go into detail as to the circumstances of how King risked her life.
The statement went on to say: ‘Any circulating rumors that insinuate that Ms. King has been anything other than an exemplary wife to Mr. Allman or is in any way complicit in impeding his recovery are patently false.’
The statement did not identify Cher by name, but it said that the incident at the Chateau Marmont occurred while Allman was ‘under the care of a sober companion that was neither hired or commissioned by Ms King.’
‘In fact, she was never so much as consulted about the hiring of this individual and has historically been excluded from the decision-making process when it comes to her husband’s medical treatment.’
Elijah, the younger of Cher’s two children, is the son of her second husband, the late rocker Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band.
He married Queeny – who plays with her sisters in the band KING – in 2013. They have no children.
Elijah has talked openly about starting to take drugs when he was 11 and about his long fight with heroin addiction.
In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Tonight Elijah said: ‘I started with drugs around the same time that we all did, around 11.
After an incident in November 2022, Elijah spent six months living at the Chateau Marmont, the landmark Sunset Boulevard hotel where Animal House star John Belushi died from a drug overdose in 1982
Insiders told DailyMail.com that worried hotel staff had regularly reached out to Cher due to his apparent drugged-out appearance. A police vehicle was seen parked outside the hotel after they were called to remove him on September 16
‘I mean it’s just what you did, it’s just what everybody did.’
He said he had started with marijuana and ecstasy and later graduated to harder drugs.
‘I was just looking to escape all the things in my past and, that’s when you turn to those kind of drugs, you know heroin and opiates,’ he said.
‘Heroin kind of saved me. If I didn’t have that at that point, I don’t know what I would have done. You may jump off a bridge. If you can only just go through that time period and live through it and then get help.’
He admitted there were times he almost died.
‘I did have some close calls and some moments of really feeling at the edge of mortality,’ he said.
‘I always kind of kept it a little bit safe but you never can do that. Even though you think that in your mind, of course the wrong things can happen.
‘The wrong combination of things can happen and you can just slip into the abyss.
‘I knew it was wrong and I knew that I was very unsatisfied with life at that point.’
Elijah is the son of Cher’s second husband, the late rock great Gregg Allman, who died in 2017
Insiders say Cher hired a caretaker in early September to keep an eye on her troubled son, who had taken to leaving the hotel and wandering down the street
In a declaration to the court in 2022, King said she and Elijah had spent 12 days in New York trying to work on their marriage.
‘Given the proper time I believe that we will reconcile,’ she said.
But their attempts to kiss and make up were interrupted, she wrote.
‘On November 30, 2022, the night of our wedding anniversary, four people came to our hotel room and removed (Elijah) from our room.
‘I was told by one of the four men who took him that they were hired by (Elijah’s) mother.’
Cher, Neatherland News Today 77, subsequently gave a cryptic denial to her daughter-in-law’s allegation, saying in an interview, ‘I didn’t do it, and if I did, I wouldn’t say I did it.’
Cher has long had a contentious relationship both with Elijah and his wife, who he met in Germany after going there for treatment for a particularly bad case of Lyme Disease.
The movie and music icon allegedly did not congratulate the newlyweds after they eloped and refused even to acknowledge their engagement.
She has often gone months and even years without even speaking to her son, who she packed off too boarding school when he was just eight.