Sean Tuohy later said that the family has been “devastated” by the claims and that his family never profited off his name.

“Michael was obviously living with us for a long time, and the NCAA didn’t like that,” Tuohy told the Daily Memphian. “They said the only way Michael could go to Ole Miss was if he was actually part of the family. I sat Michael down and told him, ‘If you’re planning to go to Ole Miss — or even considering Ole Miss — we think you have to be part of the family. This would do that, legally.’ We contacted lawyers who had told us that we couldn’t adopt over the age of 18. The only thing we could do was to have a conservatorship. We were so concerned it was on the up-and-up that we made sure the biological mother came to court.”

Legal representatives for the Tuohy family now claim that Oher tried to blackmail them for $15 million prior to the lawsuit by threatening to go public with the story.

“Over the years, the Tuohys have given Mr. Oher an equal cut of every penny received from “The Blind Side,’” attorney Marty Singer told TMZ Sports.

“Even recently, when Mr. Oher started to threaten them about what he would do unless they paid him an eight-figure windfall, and, as part of that shakedown effort refused to cash the small profit checks from the Tuohys, they still deposited Mr. Oher’s equal share into a trust account they set up for his son,” he added.

Singer further charged that Oher had been dropped by other lawyers until he “found a willing enabler and filed this ludicrous lawsuit as a cynical attempt to drum up attention in the middle of his latest book tour.”

“The notion that a couple worth hundreds of millions of dollars would connive to withhold a few thousand dollars in profit participation payments from anyone — let alone from someone they loved as a son — defies belief,” Singer told TMZ.