What to know about conservatorships

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — Retired NFL player Michael Oher, whose story inspired the Oscar-winning film “The Blind Side,” is alleging that the White couple that took him in did not legally adopt him as they have publicly claimed but instead made themselves his conservators.

Oher was 18 and a rising high school football star when Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy invited him to live with them in 2004, according to a petition filed in a Tennessee court Monday. The petition states that the Tuohys had told Oher they intended to legally adopt him and that shortly after he moved in, they presented him with what he thought were the equivalent of adoption papers.

Rather, the Tuohys filed for a conservatorship that allowed them to profit from his life story, Oher alleges. (CNN has reached out to representatives for the Tuohys but has not yet heard back.)

“They explained to me that it pretty much means the exact same thing as ‘adoptive parents,’ but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account,” Oher wrote in his 2011 memoir “I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond.”

But according to Tennessee law, where Oher and the Tuohys lived at the time, there are key distinctions between an adult adoption and a conservatorship.

How conservatorships work

A conservatorship, sometimes referred to as a guardianship, is a legal arrangement that enables a court-appointed person to make financial, medical and/or other decisions on behalf of another adult. It is typically implemented in situations when an adult is considered unable to make decisions for themselves, whether from a serious mental illness, a disability or other debilitating condition.

Conservatorships remove certain rights and responsibilities from the adult who is considered incapacitated and confer them on the conservator. A conservator can be responsible for a paying a person’s bills, controlling their finances, and managing their property and assets. They can also be charged with arranging for their medical care, deciding where they live and managing other daily affairs.

Oher alleges in the petition that the conservatorship granted to the Tuohys gave them the authority to make business deals on his behalf, “despite the fact he was over 18 year of age and had no diagnosed physical or psychological disabilities.”

He claims that under the arrangement, the Tuohys negotiated contracts for the film “The Blind Side” that resulted in the couple and their other two children receiving millions of dollars in royalties while Oher “received nothing for his rights to a $330,000,000 (or more) story that would not have existed without him.”

Conservatorships have come under scrutiny in recent years, particularly after Britney Spears’ highly publicized battle to end the 13-year-old arrangement that gave her father control over her estate and medical care. Fans had long called the pop star’s conservatorship into question, kicking off the #FreeBritney movement in 2009.

In a rare public court appearance in 2021, Spears characterized the conservatorship as abusive, alleging that over the years she was forced to perform, use birth control and take medication against her will. A judge terminated the arrangement later that year.

There are approximately 1.3 million active adult guardianship or conservatorship cases in the US, according to an estimate published in a 2018 report from the National Center for State Courts. But data around these arrangements varies widely from state to state — and is nonexistent in some cases — making it difficult for researchers to understand who exactly is in a conservatorship and how they are faring under them.

How they differ from adult adoptions

The rights of adults living under conservatorships also vary depending on the situation and the state’s laws.

Some conservatorships last for the lifetime of the incapacitated individual, while others are temporary. For example, if a person is involved in a serious accident or enters into a coma, a conservatorship might be in place until they are able to recover.

Some arrangements give conservators the power to make all life decisions for another person, while others allow the conservatee to retain some control over aspects of their lives. Generally, though, adults in conservatorships retain the right to ask a judge to end the conservatorship. They can also raise legal concerns over their conservator’s actions or decisions.

Adult adoptions, meanwhile, operate quite differently. A person over the age of 18 can be legally adopted by another adult, though the arrangement is usually symbolic. For instance, someone who was raised by a grandparent or a step-parent might want to honor that relationship by making that person their legal guardian.

Unlike a conservatorship, an adult adoption does not involve the adult giving up their rights, according to the Tennessee-based law firm Yates & Wheland.

Some conservatorships have been abused

Conservatorships are meant to protect particularly vulnerable individuals from exploitation and abuse, Elizabeth Adinolfi, an attorney with the law firm Phillips Nizer, told CNN in 2021. But some experts are concerned that the arrangement can be used for exactly the opposite.

One 2010 study by a federal watchdog identified hundreds of allegations of guardian abuse, neglect or exploitation over a 20-year period. Another 2018 study that examined 31 cases of financial exploitation among conservators in Minnesota found that the majority of conservators in those instances were family members — and that the victims were disproportionately women.

Many of the documented problems with conservatorships stem from under-resourced courts that aren’t able to vet cases as thoroughly as they should, Adinolfi said in 2021. But the system is ultimately in place to care for those who can’t take care of themselves, she added.

“There’s always a potential for abuse within a system, and as a practitioner and the courts, we all have to be mindful of that and look out for it,” she said at the time. “But the flip side of it also is there’s so much abuse that goes on for people who are vulnerable and who have a certain level of incapacity that we can’t leave them unprotected.”

Others, including Syracuse University law professor Nina Kohn, have argued some people who are under conservatorships don’t require them, or that the restrictions are more severe than they should be.

In Oher’s case, he and his attorney are asserting that a conservatorship isn’t necessary because he is capable of managing his own affairs.

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