Michael Oher is suing his adoptive family for tricking him into signing a conservatorship when he was 18. But the former NFL offensive lineman knew the Tuohy family were his “legal conservators” far before his lawsuit claims he found out, according to the book that he published in 2011. TMZ Sports took a look at I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness to The Blind Side, and Beyond, in which Oher wrote about the legal relationship he had with his family.
“It kind of felt 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,’” Oher wrote at the time. “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. 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.”
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Earlier this week, Oher filed a lawsuit in Tennessee that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy used their power as conservators to land a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties from the 2009 movie The Blind Side which is based on Oher’s life. Oher said he earned no money from the movie that grossed $300 million at the box office worldwide. He also claimed that he only recently discovered that the Tuohys had filed a conservatorship rather than an official adoption.
The Tuohys have refuted Oher’s claims. Sean Tuohy Sr. spoke to The Daily Memphian about why they are Oher’s conservators, which has to do with Oher attending Ole Miss. “Michael was obviously living with us for a long time, and the NCAA didn’t like that,” Tuohy said. “They said the only way Michael could go to Ole Miss was if he was actually part of the family. I sat Michael down and told him, ‘If you’re planning to go to Ole Miss—or even considering Ole Miss—we think you have to be part of the family. This would do that, legally.’ We contacted lawyers who had told us that we couldn’t adopt over the age of 18. The only thing we could do was to have a conservatorship.”
Oher was an All-American player at Ole Miss and was selected in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft by the Baltimore Ravens. The offensive lineman played in the NFL for eight seasons and won a Super Bowl with the Ravens during the 2012 season.
