Much to Abh-Oher
Michael Oher's (pronounced "Oar") anger at being 'fake adopted' seems avoidable.
“My two biological kids? They will find me a nice nursing home. Michael Oher will come change my bedpan every day. He will. It’s a different kind of love, and I can’t explain it to you. I cannot explain it. And, look, going out and adopting a 6’6” - 350 lb black kid is not for everybody.” This remark was made by Leigh Anne Tuohy at the 2011 TCEA conference on her adopted son, Michael Oher, who, at that point, had become a starting left tackle in the NFL. It was one of many examples of which the Tuohys spoke of adopting Oher, a story that had been made into a film, The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw.
Last fall, fans of that movie [and there were many, it did over $300M at the box office] were devastated to hear about Oher’s complaint in which he said his adoption had been faked in place of a conservatorship that had then been used, among other things, to make a movie deal where he was falsely portrayed. The movie, which won Sandra Bullock a Best Actress Oscar in 2010, is about one family’s [the Tuohy’s] embrace of a young foster child, Michael Oher, whose ensuing development with their guidance resulted in a successful football career. This petition to eliminate the conservatorship immediately began feeding the culture wars with those on the right pointing out his ingratitude and those on the left so incensed that they felt Sandra Bullock should return her Oscar.
The Tuohys have responded that whatever they earned off the movie was split 5 ways, and that Mr Oher has been attempting to “extort” them of $15M to keep this story out of the public eye. Much of the chatter last year focused on the film and didn’t place much emphasis on the book that it was based on. However, it’s the book that gives a better understanding of Oher’s feelings of betrayal.
From his late teens, Oher had believed to have been the adopted child of a wealthy family, and the Tuohys said as much during a slew of media appearances. While the Tuohys, through their attorneys, contend it was always made clear to him that the term was used “colloquially,” there are multiple references in Michael Lewis’s book that point to him having a share in the Tuohy estate. This petition, not surprisingly, follows the Tuohy’s liquidity event where they sold 105 fast food businesses and 55 real estate properties, over 6 transactions ending in 2019, for $213M. With this, the full extent of the Tuohy’s estate planning intentions would have been made clear. Oher further claims that the Tuohys have received millions for the film, while they maintain they have not. This disconnect probably originates from his adopted sister’s father-in-law, FedEx founder Fred Smith, financing the movie and whose production company has done well from the film’s success.
While the public fixates on the film and an Africian-American athlete not getting his fair due, this issue is actually an estate planning one. Though, on a personal level, Oher is not able to get past how dumb they made him to the world. Reading the book that the film was based on, Rocky Balboa has nothing on Mr Oher, who managed to rise above some of the craziest things, including a heavy-set foster mother who would sit on him as a form of discipline. To make it as he did and then as he states on the Viral Hip Hop News podcast, “…to have the credit go to somebody else when you did this at 17, 18 years old…So, that kinds of rubs you the wrong way. It rubs me the wrong way.”
This all leaves Mr Oher with not having any of the potential benefits of being the adopted son of a wealthy family (ie an inheritance), while having to deal with the ramifications of being marketed, through the movie, as someone extremely unintelligent. This is, at a time, where his NFL career is over, and he is struggling with depression. Listening to him on the Unbreakable podcast with Jay Glazer, he shared suicidal thoughts he had at the end of his NFL career: “Dealing with a concussion. Dealing with your depression. The darkest space I’ve ever been in…You’re thinking about dying. You’re just thinking about; is this going to be the night every night. Your head is pounding. You’re just…you’re at peace and ready to give up.” (Glazer, Jay. “Episode 48 - Michael Oher.” Unbreakable! A Mental Wealth Podcast, 08/09/2023, 34:30.) Although he speaks about it in the past tense, this is something that should be taken seriously by those close to him.
There are multiple places in the book where Lewis quotes the Tuohys as speaking to Oher’s wealth as a result of being their son. Not his pending wealth in the NFL, but the wealth due to him as the child of a wealthy family. Money that would come, not as a result of a conservator’s obligation to a conservatee, but as a result of a parents’ desire for their son. These examples include:
Ex. 1
...his share in the Tuohy estate came to millions.
Lewis, Michael. The Blind Side. New York, WW Norton & Company, 2007. (220)
Ex. 2
Sean made this one point - that both he and Michael were too rich to be bought - several times. Once, after the NCAA lady had asked Michael if any Ole Miss boosters had given him any money to go to Ole Miss, Sean had said, “Ma’am, he’s richer than any Ole Miss boosters.”
(Lewis, 307)
Ex. 3
“Mom,” he said, “can I ask you something about you and Dad’s will?”
“Uh huh,” she said, warily.
“Collins is going to marry Cannon [son of Fred Smith, who financed the movie] and so she’ll be a billionaire,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say that’s a done deal.”
“Michael is going to be a first-round draft choice in the NFL, so he’ll be really rich.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “So?”
“So” asked Sean Junior, “why are they even in the will?”
“Because,” said Leigh Anne. “That’s just the way it’s done.”
(Lewis, 441)
I’m puzzled that the above quotes didn’t make it into any of the coverage last fall. It contradicts the Tuohy lawyers’ claim that their use of the term “adoption” was made “colloquially.” Oher, the destitute foster child, truly believed he was rich (outside of what he earned in the NFL). Given he’s a child to parents who just sold their business for $213M, what does he care if he’s owed a few million more [to be generous] for a movie? He cares because he has been cut-off. That’s a big part of the story here and undermines the Tuohys’ claim of “extortion” or a “shake down.”
In 2019, the Tuohys completed the final sale of their 105 fast food businesses and 55 real estate properties for $213M. Such a liquidity event would make sense for Oher to wonder to what extent is he a beneficiary to whatever trusts they have set up. The movie is fiction, but Michael Lewis’s book is not. Trusts come in all shapes and sizes. Although there is tremendous nuance, there is every indication that the Tuohys have explored this world. When Oher turned down the little money that was offered to him, Sean set up a trust for one of his kids and placed the money in there instead. His business involved owning the underlying real estate of 55 of his fast food businesses. Although you can’t prescribe the correct estate planning tools as an outsider looking in, placing your real estate in trusts is helpful in many cases. Finally, his business had $70M in debt. The banker financing him would have had somebody explain to him the value of trusts at some point.
With the sale, there is no doubt that the estate planning would have been fully evolved by this point. In choosing the correct trust, the Tuohys need to consider whether they want their money over and above what they spend during their lifetimes to end up with their kids/others, charity or a combination of the two. The point is that he would have learned that he wasn’t a part of the Tuohys’ estate planning intentions by 2019. And, that’s at the latest. Regardless of what Oher knew of trusts, he couldn’t possibly imagine the Tuohys willing to pay a huge tax bill. His intentions would have been clear at that point. As SJ, Sean and Leigh Anne’s son, tells Barstool Radio:
I think when my Dad sold his company…that’s when money started being more relevant because someone put a big article out about that…and, it’s unrelated but maybe that was it?
That was it, and it’s not unrelated, if Michael Lewis’s book is to be taken at face value.
The movie is relevant here to the extent that Oher hated it. The Tuohys, on the other hand, loved it. It must have been difficult for him to say this movie doesn’t explain me, while the people that are the closest to you [or have been sold as the closest to you] are telling anyone who will listen how accurate it is. He explains:
After the movie came out, the narrative downplayed some of the qualities that make me who I am. That I am self-taught. That I’m intuitive. That I work for things. The fictional story swept all of that away. It made it look like I was sitting there waiting for a handout. It cheapened the countless days of shaking off the cold and getting to class. The years of survival, resisting the streets, making the most of myself. For the sake of a better story, the movie suggested that some of the character traits that most define me are not true.
Oher, Michael. When Your Back’s Against the Wall. New York, Avery, 2023. (266)
Not only that. The Tuohys made sure they had final approval of the script, so Oher would think they, at least, have some responsibility over the way he was portrayed. As Sean says on TV Show, Below Deck:
I got a call from Steven Spielberg, Harvey Weinstein — I had to give them the rights to use our name. And I said, “I’ll give you the rights if I get to read the script and approve or unapproved.” Sure enough, seven months later we get an envelope in the mail and it’s a script of the movie.
Then, there is the question of the payment. How can there be such a disconnect between the easy-enough-to-confirm $760k paid to the Tuohys and the millions that Oher claims is the actual number that they have profited from the film? Oher is probably including the money Alcon, the production company, has earned from the movie. Alcon Entertainment is funded by Fred Smith, founder of FedEx and his adopted sister’s father-in-law.
As Michael Lewis tells Sean Tuohy in their conversation at the New Orleans Book Festival:
Every movie studio passed on it. It’s only because your daughter was dating Fred Smith’s son, and Fred Smith said, “I know that story. That’s a great story. I’m going to make it into a movie, but I’m not going to pay anybody. I’m going to give everybody a stake in it.”
This has become part of his case, claiming the Tuohy sold his life rights without his knowledge. As Lewis explains to 60 Minutes, “The money they made off the movie is basically my money.” Therefore, Lewis was paid $1.52M for the movie and gave half to the Tuohys. The Tuohys [with or without Oher, it’s not clear] decided to split the $760,000 into 5 equal parts. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for Oher to consider that’s not actually getting paid. It was Lewis’s money. He gave half to Sean. Theoretically, he didn’t have to. It was Sean’s money. He gave a fifth to Oher. Theoretically, he didn’t have to. For him to feel that he didn’t get paid isn’t crazy.
Why make a fuss now? Because all this time he believed he was the adopted son of a wealthy family who had given him a broader stake in their wealth. An inheritance. While he thought he was coming into money Orphan Annie-style, he didn’t mind toeing the line. When he realized he is cut out, it changed everything.
I write this post on the same day that we learn of the death at the age of 40 of Oher’s teammate, Jacoby Jones, on the Ravens team that won the 2013 Super Bowl. While the reason for Jacoby’s death has not been disclosed, Oher’s sharing of suicidal thoughts in an August podcast should indicate to everybody that he may not be okay, although he was speaking in past tense.
At the same time, his grievance should be treated as more an estate planning issue than really anything to do with the movie. By attacking being exploited, as an African-American, by a movie that made several hundred million dollars for no payment, it feeds into the culture wars in a way that brings significantly more eyeballs on the story. The approach does the world a disservice, and I don’t think Oher will be better for it.
The Tuohys, by every measure, seem like honorable people. They advocate for a cheerful giving. So, my question to them:
Why renege?
Why did they cut him off? His request for $15M isn’t that absurd when they’re on the record (in the book) as him having a stake in their estate. It’s only absurd that he is asking for the money in cash [after taxes] and not to be added as a beneficiary of the trusts that they have no doubt set up. His inquiries should have been more focused on being treated as a child of theirs to a similar extent as their biological children. Again, as Mr Lewis described in the book.
They’ve built a status in the zeitgeist as the adopted parents of a foster child that went on to great success. Why not own it entirely? Why didn’t they legally adopt Mr Oher? Were they really comfortable saying he was their child in every way but one: an inheritance for him? And, that would have been fine, if they just would have been open about it.
Or, did Mr Lewis, maybe the greatest nonfiction writer of our time, misunderstand? If this stuff is sorted out, I think a lot of the anger about the movie goes away. I say this with respect. They should settle with him by making him a part of their estate planning considerations to a similar extent as their biological children. It appears to be where they were themselves when Mr Lewis wrote the book.
Oddly, listening to interviews, his grievance is not about the millions he is not going to inherit, but the millions the Tuohys-Smiths earned portraying him in a terrible way in the movie.
He’s not trying to lean in to feeling like their adopted son. If anything, he is trying to walk it back. In his most recent book, he basically retold his story leaving them out of it. Oddly, it’s more important to him that he get credit for his rags-to-riches story than anything to do with the adoption.
After everything, it’s still his place in the zeitgeist that bothers him more than anything.