The Tuohy family is seeking to enter a consent decree to end their conservatorship for former NFL offensive lineman Michael Oher, their lawyer told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Oher is seeking to end the conservatorship, which has been in place since they took him into their home when he was 18, as the family claims millions have been made on his behalf through the movie “The Blind Side.”
Oher reportedly accused the Tuohys of lying to her while getting her to sign papers to make them her conservators rather than her adoptive parents in a petition filed Monday in Tennessee. He reportedly demanded a full accounting of the assets tied to his name, claiming that he did not receive any money from a movie based on his story. made more than $300 million at the box office.
The Tuohys’ attorneys, however, say Oher already knew she wasn’t adopted, as she described the couple as her conservators three times in her 2011 book “I Beat The Odds: From Homeless, To The Blind Side,” and that he has been separated from his family for over a decade. One of the attorneys, Steve Farese, said Oher had become “more aggressive and more threatening” since the split, saying it was “devastating to the family.”
How the Tuohy family responded to Michael Oher’s allegations
Ending the conservatorship is the latest reaction from a family whose public image, built by a movie WIDESPREAD ridiculed as a classic “white savior” story, breaks down in Oher’s case, even though Oher himself he said for years that he didn’t like the movie.
A day earlier, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy released a statement co-authored by their legal team They called Oher’s claims “outrageous” and “downright ridiculous.” They also claim that Oher went through “several other lawyers” who stopped representing him once they saw the evidence, but he also filed his case to draw attention to his book tour. .
Oher, they said, recently refused to cash small income checks from the family, which continued to deposit his equal share in a trust account set up for his son. Instead, they alleged that he asked for $15 million or he would plant negative news about him.
They painted the whole thing as a “shakedown,” but said they were ready to reconcile.
on an interview with the Daily Memphian, Sean admitted that everyone in the family, including Oher, only received $14,000 from the Michael Lewis book and said, “We were never offered any money; we never asked for money. My money is well documented; You can see how much I’ve sold my company … The last thing I need is $40,000 from a movie.”
Meanwhile, the family’s son, Sean Jr., estimated he received $60,000 to $70,000 “over the course of the last four or five years” from the movie. in a separate interview.
Michael Lewis responds to Michael Oher’s allegations
Lewis, the famous financial author who brought Oher’s story to a larger public, also addressed the case, told The Washington Post that no one outside of Hollywood made a profit from the movie:
“Everybody should be mad at the Hollywood studio system,” Lewis said. “Michael Oher should join the writers’ strike. It’s horrible how accounting works in Hollywood, but the money isn’t in the Tuohys’ pockets.
Lewis reportedly claimed that Twentieth Century Fox paid $250,000 for the option to make “The Blind Side” into a movie, which he split 50-50 with the Tuohy family, who themselves said the money was split equally. in a way that includes Oher. However, Fox did not make the movie. Instead, Alcon Entertainment, a small production company reportedly backed by Tuohy’s neighbor, FedEx CEO Fred Smith, stepped in.
The movie grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, but Lewis claims that his share and the Tuohys’ share of the net income came out to about $350,000 each, with the Tuohys splitting the royalties among family members and Ouch. Lewis also said Oher called him to ask about a speaking tour to make money promoting the book.
Lewis expressed sympathy for Oher:
“What I feel sad about is seeing the whole thing up close,” Lewis said. “They gave him the resources and love. That he suspected them is breathtaking. The state of mind that a person has to do – I feel sorry for him.
It should be noted that Lewis knows Oher’s story because he is a childhood friend of Sean Tuohy.