Tuohys Ready to End Conservatorship for Michael Oher
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (NEWSnet/AP) — A Memphis couple with a longstanding relationship to former NFL player Michael Oher want to end a conservatorship that he is challenging in court, their lawyers said.
Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy intend to enter into a consent order to end the conservatorship, lawyer Randall Fishman told reporters on Wednesday.
Oher filed a petition Monday in a Tennessee probate court, accusing the Tuohys of lying to him by having him sign documents that make them his conservators, instead of his adoptive parents, nearly two decades ago.
Oher seeks a full accounting of assets, considering his life story produced millions of dollars, claiming he received nothing from the Oscar-nominated movie “The Blind Side.” He accuses the Tuohys of falsely representing themselves as his adoptive parents, saying that he learned in February 2023 that the conservatorship was not the arrangement he assumed it was — and that it provided him no familial relationship to the Tuohys.
But the Tuohys' attorneys said Oher was fully aware he had not been adopted. Fishman said Oher’s 2011 book, “I Beat The Odds: From Homeless, To The Blind Side," mentions on three occasions the Tuohys being his conservators.
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” during the past decade and this is “devastating for the family.”
The Tuohys have called the allegations a shakedown attempt, and “a court of law is no place to play,” Fishman said. In a statement released by lawyers Tuesday, the Tuohys said Oher had threatened before the court filing to plant a negative news story about them unless they pay him $15 million.
Oher’s lawyer did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment.
The conservatorship paperwork was filed months after Oher turned 18, in May 2004. Oher accuses the Tuohys of not taking legal action to assume custody from the Tennessee Department of Human Services before he was 18, although he was told to call them “Mom” and “Dad.”
Oher alleges the Tuohys to him to sign paperwork almost immediately after he moved into their home, as part of the adoption process. Oher says he was “falsely advised” that it would be called a conservatorship because he was already 18, but that adoption was the intent.
The couple didn’t simply adopt Oher, Fishman said, because the conservatorship was the simplest way to satisfy the NCAA’s concerns that the Tuohys were steering a talented athlete to University of Mississippi, their alma mater.
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