Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy had taken in Oher, who had been in the Tennessee foster care system and at one point lived on the streets. The judge-approved agreement, called a conservatorship, was made with the permission of Oher's biological mother and inked about two months before Oher signed to play offensive line for Ole Miss, where Sean Tuohy had been a standout basketball player.
Now 37, Oher seeks a full accounting of assets, considering his life story produced millions of dollars, though he says he received nothing from the movie. He accuses the Tuohys of falsely representing themselves as his adoptive parents, saying he only discovered in February that the conservatorship provided him no familial relationship to them.The Tuohys said they loved Oher like a son and supported him when he lived with them and when he was in college.
The Tuohys didn't instead adopt Oher because the conservatorship was the fastest way to satisfy the NCAA's concerns that the Tuohys weren't simply steering a talented athlete to Ole Miss, lawyer Randall Fishman said. Haneman said there were other legal options available, such as power of attorney, which would not have stripped Oher of his "legal capacity."
"People have been saying, `Well, you've got to have some kind of issue to be a ward in a conservatorship,"' Fishman said Thursday. "That's just not true. He just needed some guidance and that's why the court did it."Another Tuohy attorney, Martin Singer, said in a statement that profit participation checks and studio accounting statements support the assertions that Oher received money from the film.
Lewis told The Washington Post that no one involved in the book received millions of dollars. Regarding money made off the profits from the film, which raked in hundreds of millions of dollars, Lewis said that he and the Tuohy family each received around $350,000 after taxes and agent fees.