The family says otherwise - so we don’t know what is or isn’t true.
You know what he says. You and all those who approved your response - at this point, that’s all you know.
Typically there are three sides to every story - and you’ve heard one side. They say he couldn’t be adopted - due to age.
I wasn’t there - I don’t know. We don’t know his motives for now just like we don’t know their motives back then. I would hope they are still “his family” and it would be sad if they have no relationship.
As for did he run out of money, etc. I hope not as he recently started a foundation - so hopefully the young man saved well for his future.
–How did a competent man who (I’m guessing) had an agent negotiate his football contracts not get informed about the conservatorship? Why did the conservatorship continue when Michael Oher was a self-supporting competent adult? Did the Tuohy’s play an active role in managing his finances while he was an adult?
–Why didn’t the Tuohy’s give Michael Oher a percentage of the movie income (and book income if applicable)? It just seems like the right/obvious thing to do (particularly since the Tuohy family appears to be quite wealthy).
– The timing of the fallout seemed to roughly coincide with Michael Oher’s marriage. Apparently the Tuohy’s were not invited. Might his wife have anything to do with it? Maybe she uncovered this situation?
–If memory serves correctly, in the movie they asked Michael if he “wanted the Tuohy’s to be his legal guardians…if he wanted to be part of their family.” Guessing it was no accident that the word “adoption” was not used.
I do hope that this can be sorted out with mediation, discussion rather than through an ugly court battle.
It is a sad story - hope they find a way to reconcile.
I will point out that I’ve known people to say, “this is my adopted son” (or daughter) as a term of endearment, meaning they hang out a lot a their house. It does not shock me that it was used on a website, even if no legal adoption.
The family does seem wealthy. But i assume the football career was lucrative too.
Does anybody know if the tutor in the movie (who went off to college too) was real or fictional?
“The family does seem wealthy. But i assume the football career was lucrative too.”
Oher said that included money made off of The Blind Side, the 2009 Oscar-winning sports drama based on Michael Lewis’ 2006 book of the same name. Oher alleged that the Tuohys and their two birth children earned $225,000 each from the deal they signed for the movie rights, plus 2.5 percent of the film’s “defined net proceeds” (the movie grossed over $300 million at the box office). Oher, however, claimed he never received any money from the film.
However, Sean Tuohy denied that claim, saying the family “didn’t make any money off the movie” before acknowledging that Lewis “gave us half of his share.” Tuohy continued: “Everybody in the family got an equal share, including Michael. It was about $14,000 each.”
Tuohy went on to insist that not only was the family “never offered money,” they “never asked for money.” He added, “My money is well-documented; you can look up how much I sold my company for” (Tuohy reportedly sold several fast food franchises for over $200 million in six separate transactions).
(1) If Michael Oher was under a conservatorship with respect to his estate (i.e., finances and property), then he may not have been legally competent to be involved in any contract negotiations, depending on how narrow or broad the scope of the rights removed and transferred to the conservator(s) were.
(2) Under TN law, a person must be “disabled” before a conservatorship can be imposed by a court; and a disabled person for conservatorship purposes is defined as “any person eighteen (18) years of age or older determined by the court to be in need of partial or full supervision, protection, and assistance by reason of mental illness, physical illness or injury, developmental disability, or other mental or physical incapacity . . . .” Tenn. Code Ann. sec. 34-1-101(14). So as long as a disability persists, the conservatorship can remain in place. Typically, in TN, at the time that the annual accounting is filed the conservator(s) will file a sworn statement that there is a need for the conservatorship to continue; and it doesn’t have to be a particularly elaborate statement.
(3) The scope of the rights transferred to the Tuohys, and what they are permitted to do as conservators, would be set forth in the Order of conservatorship.
If the Tuohys were indeed the financial conservators for Michael Oher, then they will have to file – and get court approval of – a final accounting related to the property that came into their hands as conservators.
I find it very hard to believe that the business savvy Tuohys family only received half of the book author’s cut ($14,000 each family member. ) for the movie.
Michael Lewis the book’s author and Sean Tuohy have a personal connection. They were classmates of some sort. Don’t remember the particulars.
Michael Oher was an honor student and athlete at the university of Mississippi. I am positive that he would have succeeded without the Tuohy’s mentorship. Who guided him to their alma mater.
In my personal opinion, this story always felt very exploitative. The great white family helps the poor black man. So many stereotypes.
I suspect that Michael Oher felt love and affection for the Tuohy’s. From press reports from the time the movie came out, he just wanted to put his head down and play football. Stay out of the press. In hindsight, he should have been more aware of what was going on. He didn’t have good role models in his biological family. I guess now he feels he didn’t in the family that he thought adopted him.
Another piece of the puzzle that is relevant is that Sean Tuohy was an alum, donor, and booster of Ole Miss. When it looked like Michael was going to attend Ole Miss, it would have run afoul of NCAA rules if Michael were living with a booster and his family.
So, AFAIK, Tuohy’s had to make Michael ‘part of the family’ so there were no NCAA recruiting infractions. Will be interesting to hear all sides of this…it’s unfortunate that this couldn’t be handled privately.
Well, in order for there to be a valid conservatorship, Michael Oher would have had to have “mental illness, physical illness or injury, developmental disability, or other mental or physical incapacity” such that he would have a “disability” as defined by statute. Given that he was a D-1 athlete who ended up in the NFL, it’s hard to say that he had a physical illness/injury/incapacity that would have required partial or full protection, supervision or assistance. Which leads me to believe that there was a mental illness/incapacity/developmental disability involved; unless there was some very creative lawyering in getting the conservatorship set up.
Well, in the movie, it did. The NCAA sent an investigator to make sure it was Oher’s decision and not just a booster sending him to Ole Miss.
Some things that were different in real life than the movie were that Oher started at the private school playing football and basketball before the Tuohys became involved, not as junior with only one football season to play in hs. He took extra courses from BYU summer program as a lot of athletes do to meet NCAA requirements - and those aren’t cheap. I think if the Tuohys hadn’t been poking him along, he never would have qualified for NCAA D1. and probably not become an NFL player.
He was 18 and still in hs so unlike other 18 year olds maybe there was a need for the Tuohys to have some type of legal status to sign his permission forms, his medical forms, etc. My nephew turned 18 in Oct of his senior year, he was estranged from my brother and his mother had moved out of town. He was living with some 19-20 year old friends (not in hs) and the hs didn’t like it. Some arrangement was made for him to continue in hs (I think they found an adult to sign things for him). They didn’t want an 18 year old living in a party house at the hs every day.
In the movie (which Oher should have watched a million times as it is on TV all the time) there was a big scene where they were trying to get a driver’s license and didn’t have the right documentation and Leigh Ann was trying to become his guardian. I’m sure the movie took liberties with the wording (guardian/conservatorship) but in the movie there is never a legal adoption.
I don’t find it unusual for Leigh Ann to consider Michael her son and refer to him that way. Many people do include ‘bonus kids’ and truly consider them as family members. My mother considered my BIL’s son as a ‘grandchild’ (he got the same $5/mo as all the others) even though there was no legal relationship. Oher should have known that he was never adopted - never went to court to agree to it (any kid over 12 has to do that), never changed his name or birth certificate. I just think it would have come up a few times when he was buying a house or getting a passport or even paying his taxes.
And really, all those contracts, agents, managers and no one ever questioned the conservatorship? Oher never wondered why his ‘parents’ need to sign his contracts?
From all accounts, Michael Oher was a honor student at Ole Miss while playing D1 football. It doesn’t seem like he had any physical or mental acuity issues. So how was the conservatorship set up?
Seems a mystery. As is the issue with Sean Tuohy being an Ole Miss booster. As is the relationship between the author and the Tuohy’s. And the lack of money with the movie option. As is the choice of an agent for Oher.
Sean Tuohy, as I recall, played basketball for Ole Miss back in the day.
It would be interesting to see the court file on the conservatorship: whether there was a report of the GAL (or whether appointment of the GAL was waived – if so, that would be unusual); whether there was a sworn medical/psychological statement about disability; what the annual accountings revealed; whether there were court Orders approving expenditures/investments; etc.
I used to do a few interviews for conservatorships for a court (not TN) Most of them were for mentally impaired children becoming adults, so I just asked a series of questions about their lives, money, jobs, etc. Usually there were no objections from the ‘child’ and the parents were just getting the papers to deal with bank accounts, disability funds, etc.
Michael may not have objected when he was 18, still in hs, and not financially mature. A court could have found he needed someone to look out for him and this was the way to do it. In the book (which i read but don’t remember as well as the movie as I’ve seen in a few times) I think both parents were still alive so they may not have been able to adopt him without more court action (suing the parents, tracking down forms and records) and the conservatorship may have just been easier since he was 18 or turning 18 and going off to college. In the book, Collins (sister) did either stay back year of hs or college to be in the same class as him.
I think the family really went out of their way to help him.
Sean Tuohy has recently said just that according to one media report
As for Oher’s claim about the conservatorship, Sean Tuohy told the Daily Memphian the legal arrangement was allegedly meant to satisfy the NCAA while Oher played football for while at the University of Mississippi.
“They said the only way Michael could go to Ole Miss was if he was actually part of the family,” Sean Tuohy said. “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.” ‘The Blind Side’ father Sean Tuohy responds to Michael Oher’s allegations – NBC New York