Menace Acre Farm & Advocacy

Cultivating Self-Sufficiency, Community, and Justice

Menace Acre Farm was not built easy. It was forged through grit, deep love, and my determination to survive.

I was raised by a tight-knit family of four generations of women, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother. Gram taught me to read and write, bringing me along to the school where she taught during summer breaks so I could keep up on my education, she’s the main reason I can speak as well as I can. My great-grandmother fed all of us every Sunday until her passing, delicious home cooked meals. My mom tried the "on-her-own" approach for a while, but she was built for community, so I grew up with both my mother and grandmother as my primary parents.

When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I don’t think she spent a single moment thinking about herself. She hid how sick she was because she never wanted anyone fussing over her, she was always worried about how her death would impact others. She spent seven years fighting with everything she had, keeping one central priority above everything else, the same priority she had since September of 1995. Ensuring that her sole disabled child would be safe, housed, and provided for after she was gone. To guarantee that safety, she established a special needs trust intended to serve as my lifelong safety net.

When the Safety Net Collapsed

When she passed away in 2020, everything changed. Gram had passed just a few months earlier. Instead of finding security, I was displaced, trespassed from the home where I had lived for 15 years, cut off from my family, and forced into years of homelessness and exploitation.

I may not have spent every one of those years sleeping on a street corner, but sometimes I wish I had. When you navigate the world with a vulnerability like autism, people will try to take advantage of you at every turn, especially when there is a trust that is supposed to be caring for you. Unbeknownst to me, tens of thousands of dollars in trust funds vanished in administrative legal fees billed by the very representation I had hired, all while I went without basic necessities or answers.

It was only after I clawed my way out that I discovered what had been there the entire time. After closing on my home, an audit by the Department of Health and Human Services revealed over $134,000 that had been sitting in the trust account as an asset in my name while I struggled daily.

After a year of fighting for transparency, I petitioned the court to remove the administration of the trust, outlining serious, documented breaches of fiduciary duty.

Deciding to Fight Forward

I was repeatedly denied a fair chance at justice by a system that seemed designed to exhaust my endurance and encourage me to give up. So, I decided to fight forward.

I had already finished high school, earned my diploma, enrolled in an undergraduate psychology program, and earned membership in a national honor society. Teaching myself the complexities of trust administration, court rules, and probate law was simply the next necessary step.

As I continued to defend my rights pro se in the probate court system, I realized I was far from alone. Countless vulnerable Americans are being exploited by conflicted trustees, fiduciaries, guardians, and procedural court dismissals. A legal framework ostensibly built to protect these individuals has become an engine that isolates and drains them. It’s sickening.

I decided I wasn't going to let that stand.

Making a Menace

You’re probably thinking the same thing I did at first. “You’re just one person with an acre of land out in the middle of nowhere, what can you possibly do?

It turns out you can do an awful lot when you refuse to back down. It all starts right here with this one-acre homestead, I intend to help change this system.

Today, Menace Acre offers a voice for reform, sustainable farm goods, and certified Work Incentives Planning (WIP). Through individualized consultations and practical courses, I teach vulnerable citizens how to become absolute "menaces" to an exploitative system: by standing up for their rights, asserting their autonomy, and maximizing their state and federal benefits without fear.

Welcome to Menace Acre Farm & Advocacy. We're here to change the world.