Mariah Carey is once again being taken to court by her brother, just weeks after the deaths of their mother and sister.

The filing stems from Morgan Carey’s 2021 defamation lawsuit against Carey, in which he claimed mentions of him in her 2020 tell-all memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, were “false and defamatory” and “personally invasive and painful”.

A judge has ordered the estranged siblings to sit for depositions in Morgan’s lawsuit before January 31, 2025, reports Fox News, which obtained documents regarding the suit.

The order was filed on August 27 - 72 hours after theirsister Alison and mother Patricia died on the same day.

“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend,” Carey, 55, told People at the time. “Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day.”

Mariah Carey has been ordered back to court amid her brother's ongoing lawsuit against her. Photo / Getty Images

In the defamation lawsuit, Morgan, 64, alleged Carey’s coverage of him in her memoir had caused “serious damage to his reputation and to his personal and business affairs”.

Morgan also alleged “the damage was intended”, referencing an interview with Oprah Winfreyin which Carey, who had been promoting the memoir, referred to him as her “ex-brother” and claimed he “drew first blood”.

Morgan is seeking punitive damages but not a specific sum, Fox News reports, with the filing instead aiming to “undo the damage which these false and defamatory passages have caused and will cause him in his personal and business life”.

The filing is also focused on seeking “judicial determination that many of the passages in it which are of and concerning him are false and defamatory”, as per the outlet.

In February 2022, a New York judge dismissed most of the lawsuit, but ruled that Morgan could still sue Carey over passages suggesting he distributed cocaine and implying he had been imprisoned for a serious crime.

Carey, who has long been estranged from her family, claimed in her memoir it was “emotionally and physically safer” for her to avoid contact with both Morgan and Alison.

Her now-deceased sister had also sued Carey following the release of the memoir, claiming a “heartless, vicious [and] vindictive” Carey had deliberately inflicted “emotional distress” upon her.

In The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the star claimed Alison had tried to “sell her out to a pimp”when she was just 12. She alleged her older sister had “drugged” her with tranquilisers, offered her cocaine, and attempted to turn her to prostitution.

“When I was 12 years old, my sister drugged me with Valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third degree burns and tried to sell me out to a pimp,” Carey said in the book; an extract that was read aloud by Winfrey during her appearance on The Oprah Conversation.

Carey also alleged both her siblings had “sold lies” about her to the media, describing Morgan as “extremely violent” and Alison as “troubled and traumatised”.

“We don’t even really know each other ... we didn’t grow up together, but we did. Like, they were on their journeys, by the time I got into the world, they had already been damaged, in my opinion. But again, I wasn’t there,” Carey told Winfrey at the time.

“I literally felt like an outsider amongst my own family.”

Mariah Carey with her mother Patricia and daughter Monroe Cannon. Photo / Getty Images

Fraught family relationships are not uncommon in the entertainment industry.

In January last year, it was reported Priscilla Presley had challenged her late daughter Lisa Marie’s trust in court just weeks after her sudden death - pitting Priscilla against her own granddaughter, Riley Keough.

Lisa Marie was the sole heir of her father Elvis Presley’s fortune when he died in 1977, which, thanks to Graceland mansion becoming a tourist attraction, was said to be worth upwards of US$100 million ($160m). Following Lisa Marie’s death, that estate was set to go to her children, with Keough as the sole trustee. Priscilla contested this in court, saying she was initially named trustee.

Brad Pitt is also said to be estranged from his children amid his bitter, ongoing divorce from Angelina Jolie. In May, TMZ obtained court documents that their daughter Shiloh had filed paperwork on her 18th birthday requesting “Pitt” to be dropped from her formerly double-barrelled surname. The 18-year-old is now known as Shiloh Jolie.

Also in May, it was revealed Vivienne, 16 - who had helped produce Jolie’s Broadway musical The Outsiders - was listed in the playbill as “Vivienne Jolie” instead of “Vivienne Jolie-Pitt”. In July, it was reported Pitt had “virtually no contact” with his now-adult

children (Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, and Shiloh) but is still able to visit Vivienne and her twin, Knox.

Carey’s book is one of several high-profile memoirs to be released in recent years, including Pamela Anderson’s Love, Pamela and Prince Harry’s Spare in 2023, and Rebel Wilson’s Rebel Rising in 2024.