Oher conservatorship to end amidst legal fight

Sep 29, 2023, 12:00 PM ET

MEMPHIS, Tenn.– A Tennessee judge stated Friday that she is ending a conservatorship arrangement between former NFL player Michael Oher and a Memphis couple who took him in when he remained in high school, but the highly publicized disagreement over financial problems will continue.Shelby County Probate

Court Judge Kathleen Gomes said she is terminating the arrangement reached in 2004 that enabled Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy to manage Oher’s finances. Oher signed the arrangement when he was 18 and living with the couple as he was being hired by colleges as a star high school football player. Their story is the topic of the 2009 film”The Blind Side,” which made Sandra Bullock an Oscar.Gomes stated she was not dismissing the case. Oher has asked that the Tuohys

offer a financial accounting of cash that might have concerned them as part of the agreement, declaring they utilized his name, image and likeness to enrich themselves and lied to him that the agreement implied the Tuohys were embracing him.Editor’s Picks 2 Related In Tennessee, a conservatorship eliminates power from a person to make

their own decisions.

It is frequently

used in the case of a medical condition or disability.But Oher’s conservatorship was approved” in spite of the fact that he was over 18 years of ages and had actually no diagnosed physical or mental disabilities,”his petition said.Gomes stated she was disrupted that such an agreement was ever reached. She said she had never seen in her 43-year career a conservatorship agreement reached with someone who was not handicapped which the conservatorship needs to have ended long ago.”I can not think it got done,”she said.Oher and the Tuohys listened in by video conference call however did not speak. Lawyers for both parties had actually agreed that the agreement ought to end, but

the case will continue to deal with Oher’s claims.In August,

Oher, 37, submitted a petition in probate court accusing the Tuohys of lying to him by having him sign documents making them his conservators rather than his adoptive parents nearly two decades ago. Oher wanted the conservatorship to be terminated, a complete accounting of the cash earned off his name and story, and to be paid what he is due, with interest.He implicated the couple of wrongly representing themselves as his adoptive moms and dads, saying he discovered in February that the conservatorship consented to in 2004 was not the arrangement he believed it was– which it offered him no familial relationship to

them.Oher claims the Tuohys have actually kept him in the dark about monetary transactions related to his name, image and likeness during the 19-year life of the agreement.The Tuohys have actually called the claims they enhanced themselves at his expense over-the-top, upsetting and absurd and part of a”

shakedown”by Oher.In a court filing, the affluent couple said they loved Oher like a son and offered him with food, shelter, clothes and vehicles while he lived with them but denied stating they planned to legally embrace him.The Tuohys’filing said Oher referred to them as”mother and father, “and they occasionally

described Oher as a child. They acknowledged that websites reveal them referring to Oher as an adopted kid but that the term was utilized “in the colloquial sense and they have actually never planned that recommendation to be seen with legal ramification.”The Tuohys stated the conservatorship was the tool picked to abide by NCAA rules that would have kept Oher from attending Ole Miss, where Sean Tuohy had been a standout basketball player.” When it became clear that the Petitioner could rule out going to the University of Mississippi [‘ Ole Miss’] as an outcome of living with the Participants, the NCAA made it clear that he could attend Ole Miss if he was part of the Tuohy household in some style, “the Tuohys’Sept. 14 court filing said.The Tuohys likewise stated Oher lied about learning that he was not embraced in February. They stated Oher’s 2011 book” I Beat the Odds”indicates that he was fully aware that the Tuohys were appointed as conservators.Agents negotiated a small advance for the Tuohys from the production company for”The Blind Side,” based on a book composed by Sean Tuohy’s buddy, Michael Lewis, the couple’s legal representatives have stated.

That consisted of”a tiny portion of net revenues “divided similarly amongst a group that included Oher, they said.The lawyers said they estimated each of the Tuohys and Oher received $100,000 apiece, and the couple paid taxes on Oher’s part for him.The Tuohys’filing stated they never ever signed any pro football agreements for Oher which he enjoyed with their monetary plans from”The Blind Side. “Oher was the 23rd total pick in the 2009 draft, and he spent his very first five seasons with the Baltimore Ravens, where he won a Super Bowl. He played 110 games over 8 NFL

seasons, including 2014 when he started 11 games for the Tennessee Titans. Oher completed his career with the Carolina Panthers.