Judge ends Michael Oher conservatorship with Tuohy family amid Blind Side dispute

A Tennessee judge said Friday she is ending a conservatorship agreement between former NFL player Michael Oher and a Memphis couple who took him in when he was in high school, but the highly publicized dispute over financial issues will continue.

Shelby County District Court Judge Kathleen Gomes said she is terminating the 2004 agreement that allowed Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy to control Oher’s finances. Oher signed the agreement when he was 18 and living with the couple when he was recruited by colleges as a star football player in high school. Their story is the subject of the film The Blind Side, which won Sandra Bullock an Oscar.

Gomes said she is not dismissing the case. Oher has asked the Tuohys to provide a financial accounting of the money that may have come to them as part of the deal, claiming they used his name, image and likeness to enrich themselves and lied to him that the deal meant the Tuohys adopted him. .

In Tennessee, a conservatorship takes away a person’s power to make decisions for themselves, and is often used in the case of a medical condition or disability.

But Oher’s conservatorship was approved “despite the fact that he was over 18 years of age and had no diagnosed physical or psychological disabilities,” according to his petition.

Gomes said she was disturbed that such an agreement was ever reached. She said that in her 43-year career, she had never seen a conservatorship agreement with someone who was not disabled.

“I can’t believe it worked,” she said.

Oher and Tuohys listened in via video conference call, but said nothing. Lawyers for both sides agreed the agreement would end, but the case will continue to hear Oher’s claims. Gomes said it should have ended a long time ago.

In August, Oher, 37, filed a petition in court accusing the Tuohys of lying to him by getting him to sign papers that made them his conservators instead of his adoptive parents nearly two decades ago. Oher wanted the conservatorship ended, the money he had made from his name and story to be written off in full, and he to be paid what was due to him, with interest.

He accused the couple of falsely representing themselves as his adoptive parents. He said he discovered in February that the conservatorship he had agreed to in 2004 was not the arrangement he thought it was — and that it gave him no family ties to them.

Oher claims that the Tuohys kept him in the dark about financial transactions involving his name, image and likeness throughout the 19-year term of the agreement.

The Tuohys have called the claims that they have enriched themselves at his expense bizarre, hurtful and absurd and part of a ‘shakedown’ of Oher.

In a lawsuit, the wealthy couple said they loved Oher like a son and provided him with food, shelter, clothing and cars while he lived with them, but denied they planned to legally adopt him.

The Tuohys’ filing stated that Oher called them “Mom and Dad,” and occasionally they referred to Oher as a son. They acknowledged that websites show themselves referring to Oher as an adopted son, but the term was only used “in the colloquial sense and it was never intended that that reference would be construed with legal implications.”

The Tuohys said the conservatorship was the tool chosen to comply with NCAA rules that would have prevented Oher from attending the University of Mississippi, where Sean Tuohy had been a standout basketball player.

“When it became clear that petitioner could not consider attending the University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”) because he lived with respondents, the NCAA made it clear that he could attend Ole Miss if he were part of the Tuohy family one way or another,” according to the Tuohys’ September 14 lawsuit.

The Tuohys also said Oher lied when he found out he wasn’t adopted in February. They said Oher’s 2011 book I Beat the Odds indicates he was fully aware that the Tuohys had been appointed as conservators.

Agents negotiated a small advance for the Tuohys from the production company of The Blind Side, based on a book written by Sean Tuohy’s friend Michael Lewis, the couple’s lawyers say. That included “a small percentage of net profits,” divided equally among a group that included Oher, they said.

The attorneys said they estimate that each of the Tuohys and Oher received $100,000 each, and that the couple paid taxes on Oher’s share for him.

The Tuohys’ filing stated that they had never signed Oher to a professional football contract, and he was happy with their financial arrangements from The Blind Side.

Oher was the 23rd overall pick in the 2009 draft out of Mississippi, and he spent his first five seasons with the Baltimore Ravens, where he won a Super Bowl. He played 110 games over eight NFL seasons, including 2014 when he started 11 games for the Tennessee Titans. Oher finished his career with the Carolina Panthers.