The drama surrounding former football player Michael Oher and his “adoptive” parents continues.
Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy are ready to end a conservatorship that Oher is challenging in court, the Associated Press reports. According to their lawyer, Randall Fishman, the Tuohys plan to enter a consent order to end the conservatorship.
The ex-NFL player dropped a bomb on Aug. 14, saying he was suing the family
for misrepresenting the terms of a conservatorship he signed while in high school. As the inspiration behind the 2009 Oscar-winning movie The Blind Side, the family is accused of using Oher’s story to enrich themselves and their two birth children while locking him out of any benefits from his own life story. In the movie, Sean and Leigh Anne adopted Oher, which he says is false.Instead of adopting him, Oher claims, the Tuohys established a conservatorship, profiting from his name, image, and likeness. The Tuohys’ lawyer says that’s not the case.
Fishman says Oher always knew he had not been adopted. The lawyer claims Oher mentioned the Tuohys being conservators for him three times in his 2011 book: I Beat The Odds: From Homeless to The Blind Side. Tuohy representatives say their
clients and the former tackle have been estranged for nearly a decade. Meanwhile, Tuohy family attorney Steve Farese says Oher has become “more and more vocal and more and more threatening” over the years, and this is “devastating for the family.”Oher is looking for the Tuohys to pay back any money they received through the conservatorship, including the life rights agreement and contract for The Blind Side movie starring Sandra Bullock, according to USA Today. Fishman said Oher received compensation for the film: “Michael got every dime, every dime he had coming.”
Farese claims the Tuohys don’t need Oher’s money, with their wealth outside Oher’s NFL career being more than enough. “They don’t need his money,” Farese said. “They’ve never needed his money. Mr. Tuohy sold his company for $220 million.”