Daveigh Chase, Disney’s Lilo, died homeless with millions in residuals she never collected
The Lilo & Stitch star, who died this week at 35, was destitute in her final years, according to her father. Her longtime manager says a career’s worth of Disney residuals sat in an account she was never able to reach.
The story of Daveigh Chase‘s death has come into sharper, sadder focus, and it lands on a brutal contrast. Her father says she died homeless and destitute. Her manager says she had millions of dollars she couldn’t collect.
What her father told the Times
Chase died Tuesday in Los Angeles at 35. Her father, John David Schwallier, confirmed the death to The New York Times, saying the cause was complications from bacterial meningitis and a blood infection.
Schwallier said his daughter had been homeless and living near the hospital with her boyfriend, and that the couple were “destitute.” He said she had struggled with drugs since she was 13, and that he hadn’t spoken with her since she was 19, after a falling-out within the family.
He arrived at the hospital just before she died.
What her manager says was waiting for her
The other half of the story comes from John Ryan, who managed Chase for more than a decade.
Ryan told the New York Post that the deal Chase signed as a child to voice Lilo was unusually generous. Instead of a flat fee, it gave her ongoing residuals and a cut of merchandise and other products using her voice. Lilo became one of Disney’s most enduring characters, and the checks kept coming.
By Ryan’s account, she never cashed them. He said he kept receiving SAG-AFTRA notices about unclaimed residual checks at his office, and estimated there was “millions” sitting in an account in her name. He and Chase’s stepsister tried to find her over the past year, he said, even hiring a private investigator, but lost her before they could get her help.
The gap at the center of it
Strip the story to its bones and it’s two facts that should not be able to coexist.
A career’s worth of money from one of the most beloved Disney characters of the century, sitting in an account. And the woman who earned it, dying homeless a few miles away, too far from all of it to ever sign for the check. Being wealthy on paper did nothing for the person whose name was on the paper.
This is only the first wave of accounts, told by a father who’d been estranged for years and a manager piecing it together from notices in the mail, and the full picture of Chase’s last decade will take time to emerge. What both of them agree on is the shape of the loss. A girl who, at 11, was a little embarrassed that anyone might recognize her, grew up to become a voice millions adored, and died with almost none of what that voice had earned her.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
The New York Times (June 17, 2026), John S.W. MacDonald reporting, verified for her father John David Schwallier confirming the death and cause, his account that she was homeless and destitute, the estrangement, and the biographical details
The New York Post and The California Post (June 17, 2026), verified for manager John Ryan’s account of the unclaimed residuals, the childhood Lilo deal, the SAG-AFTRA notices, and the efforts to locate her
TMZ (June 17, 2026), verified for the initial cause of death and the malnutrition hospitalization