by Ronnie Greene
Amid the eyebrow-raising contentions detailed in court this week by former NFL star Michael Oher — that his supposed adoptive parents never actually adopted him, and that an Oscar-winning movie about their relationship was built on a lie — another truth also was revealed.
In the US, adult conservatorships often fail to protect those under the court’s watch. In Oher’s case, records show, the system wasn’t watching at all for nearly two decades.
The judge who approved Oher’s conservatorship told Bloomberg Law no case papers ever crossed his desk after the initial approval. “To my recollection nothing was ever forwarded to me,” said former Probate Judge Robert Benham, who retired in 2013.
Instead of being adopted, as he thought, Oher had gone into a conservatorship in 2004 with the Tennessee family that took him in. Yet for 19 years, his conservators never filed annual accountings or other court papers, Oher’s filing contends and court records show.
Indeed, the court file in the Oher case is empty between December 2004, when the conservatorship was approved, and this week, when the new petition was filed. A court official said the Oher digitized file contains all of the case’s pleadings.
Did he ever ask questions about the case?
“No, and I would have had no reason to unless they would have filed something in court for an additional hearing,” Benham said.
Uplifting Journey
Oher, one of 12 children, grew up in the Hurt Village Housing Projects in Memphis, Tennessee, and became a ward of the state at age 10. By his junior year in high school, big-time college football programs were recruiting him, even as Oher was “nearly penniless” and took an hour on buses to get to a Christian school.
During 10th and 11th grades, he began staying with family friends. Soon, he also started staying with a prominent Memphis family headed by Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy. In 2004, after he turned 18, the Tuohys invited Oher to live with them, his court filing said. Oher said the Tuohys told him they were adopting him, and he signed papers that December he thought had made the adoption official.
“The Tuohys presented him with what he understood to be legal papers that were a necessary step in the adoption process,” his court filing said. “Michael trusted the Tuohys and signed where they told him to sign.”
He went off to star as an offensive lineman for the Ole Miss Rebels, the Tuohys alma mater. In 2009, Oher became a first-round NFL draft pick. His journey, and the family’s support, inspired the movie “The Blind Side,” released later that year and featuring an Oscar-winning performance by Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy.
A Story Twist
This week, Oher’s court filing in Tennessee shattered that narrative, as first reported by ESPN.
Oher said the Tuohys never formally adopted him. Instead, when he signed those papers in 2004, he was actually agreeing to put himself under the conservatorship of the Tuohys. That distinction, his court petition contends, enriched the Tuohys at his expense.
The family, he contends, profited handsomely from the movie. The “Conservators and their children collectively received millions of dollars and Michael received nothing for his rights to a $330,000,000 (or more) story that would not have existed without him.”
Randall J. Fishman, an attorney who represented the Tuohys when they filed for the conservatorship, said he couldn’t answer questions. “I won’t have any comment about any of that until I talk to them and we’ll file an answer,” he told Bloomberg Law.
Bloomberg Law sent questions to the Tuohys about the conservatorship and the court petition, but they did not respond by Tuesday afternoon. To local Tennessee media, the Tuohys said they were “devastated” by the allegations and that they had tried to help Oher. Sean Tuohy said lawyers told the family at the time they had to use a conservatorship, not an adoption, because Oher was 18.
Anne Johnson, an attorney for Oher, said she could not comment about the case.
Nineteen
years after it began, Oher is formally seeking to end his
conservatorship and to require the Tuohys to account for their actions.
He is asking a probate judge in Shelby County, Tennessee, to sanction
the Tuohys “for their misconduct” and to require they pay him
compensatory and punitive damages.
No Oversight
Across the US, adult guardianships and conservatorships often feature scant judicial scrutiny. A Bloomberg Law investigation published this year, In the Name of Protection, revealed how lax oversight leaves those under guardianship vulnerable to abuse.
In their petition to end Oher’s case his lawyers, Johnson and J. Gerard Stranch IV, zero in on this lack of oversight.
The Tuohys, they said, never filed yearly accountings of the conservatorship, as required. Nor did they file required fiduciary or other statements “to inform the Court as to whether the conservatorship should continue.”
Retired probate judge Benham said the clerk’s office, not the judge, would be responsible for flagging any late or unfiled reports.
“The clerk’s office is a separate elected entity, and they are charged with the duty of notifying people who don’t file accountings,” he said, noting that the system handles a large caseload. “You’re talking about thousands of cases.”
Benham said he always knew the case was a conservatorship, not an adoption, and said he hoped the structure he approved would have benefited Oher over the ensuing years.
“And hopefully somebody was helping him with his investments because so many of them end up broke,” he said, referring to “professional athletes.”
Benham admitted he was “surprised” when he saw the news of Oher’s case filing.
“My first reaction was that I’d like to hear both sides of the story,” the retired judge said.
Full Article & Source:
Oher’s ‘Blind Side’ Guardianship Case File Ignored for 19 Years
See Also:
Michael Oher
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