‘Blind Side’ Tuohy family will end 19-year conservatorship for Michael Oher, attorneys say
The family who took in former NFL star Michael Oher, inspiring the Oscar-nominated film “The Blind Side,” plan to end their conservatorship — which he’s challenging in court, claiming they duped him out of millions of dollars.
Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy will enter into a consent order to end the conservatorship, their lawyer Randall Fishman said at a news conference Wednesday.
Oher, 37, claimed the conservatorship allowed the Memphis couple to retain legal power over him and that they made millions from “The Blind Side” — which grossed $300 million at the box office — while didn’t get a cent.
On Monday, the former Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl winner filed a petition in a Tennessee probate court accusing the Tuohys of lying to him by having him sign papers that made them his conservators, rather than his adoptive parents, almost two decades ago in May 2004.
He sought to have the conservatorship ended and asked for a full accounting of the money earned off the use of his name, including the blockbuster 2009 flick starring Sandra Bullock and the novel that inspired it.
Tuohys’ attorneys said Oher was well aware he had not been adopted.
Fishman said he mentioned that the couple was his conservators three times in “I Beat The Odds: From Homeless, To The Blind Side,” Oher’s 2011 memoir.
Oher acknowledged his conservatorship with the Tuohys in the book.
“There was one major event that happened right after I graduated high school: I became a legal member of the Tuohy family,” Oher wrote. “It felt kind of like a formality, as I’d been a part of the family for more than a year at that point.
“Since I was already over the age of eighteen and considered an adult by the state of Tennessee, Sean and Leigh Anne would be named as my ‘legal conservators,’” he wrote.
“They explained to me that it means pretty much the exact same thing as ‘adoptive parents,’ but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account,” Oher added. “Honestly, I didn’t care what it was called. I was just happy that no one could argue that we weren’t legally what we already knew was real: We were a family.”
The couple’s attorneys said the Tuohys and Oher have been estranged for about a decade.
Steve Farese said Oher has become “more and more vocal and more and more threatening” in recent years, adding that this is “devastating for the family.”
The Tuohys have called Oher’s allegations a shameful shakedown attempt, and “a court of law is no place to play,” Fishman said.
On Tuesday, the couple said through their lawyers that Oher had threatened before filing the petition to plant a negative news story about them unless they paid him $15 million.
Oher accused the Tuohys of falsely representing themselves as his adoptive parents, saying he discovered in February that the conservatorship was not the arrangement he believed it to be.
He said he was “falsely advised” that it would be called a conservatorship because he was already 18, but that adoption was actually the intent.
The couple didn’t simply adopt Oher because a conservatorship was the fastest way to satisfy the NCAA’s concerns that they weren’t simply steering him to Ole Miss, their alma mater, which he later attended, Fishman said.
The Tuohys added that they set up the conservatorship to help Oher with health insurance, a driver’s license and being admitted to college.
Their attorneys said they estimated that each of the Tuohys and Oher received $100,000 each, adding that the couple paid taxes on his portion for him.
“Michael got every dime, every dime he had coming,” Fishman said.
“They don’t need his money. They’ve never needed his money. Mr. Tuohy sold his company for $220 million,” Farese added.
With Post wires
