Former NFL star Michael Oher wrote a 2011 memoir called “I Beat The Odds: From Homelessness, To The Blind Side, And Beyond” after “The Blind Side” became a hit on the big screen and the bookshelves.
Randall Fishman, who is a lawyer for the Tuohy family, said Wednesday via Fox News that Oher was aware of his conservatorship and that he knew he wasn’t actually adopted, despite a petition being filed in a Tennessee court that alleged someone had lied to him when he signed the documents at 18 years old.
In his book, Oher said that he “became a legal member of the Tuohy family.”
“There was one major event that happened right after I graduated high school: I became a legal member of the Tuohy family. It felt kind of like a formality, as I’d been a part of the family for more than a year at that point,” Oher wrote.
“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.’ 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,” he continued.
“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.”
Michael Oher claims that he first found out he wasn’t legally adopted by the Tuohys, and instead made them his legal conservators, in February 2023.
It turns out he acknowledged they were his conservators in his own book, which was published in 2011.https://t.co/o233DKLdsW
— OutKick (@Outkick) August 17, 2023
Lawyers for the Tuohy family are also arguing Oher received $100,000 from “The Blind Side” profits just like every member of the family, according to the New York Post.
Tuohy family attorneys Fishman and Steven Farese Sr. denied Oher’s allegations about the conservatorship, telling the media “a pretty simple (accounting) process” will debunk the claims, according to The Tennessean.
Michael Lewis, the author of the book that inspired the movie, spoke to The Washington Post and said the Tuohys didn’t get rich off the movie — and that the $250,000 that he received from 20th Century Fox was split with the family.
Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy have claimed they split the money evenly among the five family members, including Oher, according to WaPo.
The Tuohys also claimed 2.5% of all future proceeds from the film, which reportedly equals around $500,000, has been split among Sean, Leigh Anne, their two biological children (Collins and SJ) and Oher, The Tennessean reported. (RELATED: Tuohy Family Speaks Out On Michael Oher’s ‘Blind Side’ Claims)
Fishman told Fox that Oher received “every dime he had coming.”
“They don’t need his money. They’ve never needed his money. Mr. Tuohy sold his company for $220 million,” Farese added.