The Blind Side has a heartwarming movie about a homeless young man with great potential for football but a terrible family situation. Leigh Anne Tuohy empathizes with Michael Oher and ends up supporting and adopting him to help him triumph in the field. The Oscar-nominated movie took our hearts, but according to the real Michael Oher, whose story inspired the film, this is all a lie.
Michael Oher filed a petition to end the conservatorship imposed by his adoptive mother, Leigh Anne. He claims that the Tuohys tricked him into signing the conservatorship telling him it was pretty much the same as signing adoption papers. He claims his adoptive parents did so to make millions off his name and potential.
Michael Oher is now 37 years old and has been retired from the NFL for a while. Still, he has been in conservatorship since he was 18 years old. The legal petition to end the conservatorship reads as follows:
“Michael trusted the Tuohys and signed where they told him to sign. What he signed, however, and unknown to Michael until after February 2023, were not adoption papers, or the equivalent of adoption papers.”
Moreover, the original conservatorship papers issued in 2004, show that there were “no known physical or psychological disabilities,” which is basically the main reason why legal adults end up agreeing or being forced into a conservatorship as we saw in Britney Spears‘ case. Michael Oher was happy to have a family after his mother abandoned him, but when the movie came out he was upset the story portrayed him as an unintelligent teenager who had problems at school. Not only that, according to his attorney J. Gerard Stranch IV soon discovered that he was the only one in the family that didn’t receive any royalty checks for the movie about his story.
The filing to end the conservatorship also claims that while most of his classmates’ families saw him as a “nice kid in need,” the Tuohnys saw “something else; a gullible young man whose athletic talent could be exploited for their own benefit.”
Michael Oher ended up having a successful career playing football at the University of Mississippi. His talent was soon appreciated and ended up being drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in 2009, the same year The Blind Side came out. However, according to the petition, after being tricked to sing the conservatorship papers, Oher gave “total control” over his career making him unable to sign any contracts.
Finally, according to the papers, “discovering that he wasn’t actually adopted devastated Mike and wounded him deeply.”
