Autistic Queer Artist wants justice and a roof over her head. Too much to ask?

This fundraiser is for Maria, the artist and creator behind Maria Heller Designs. She is diagnosed Autistic ( Autism Spectrum Disorder, or in Romanian Tulburare de Spectru Autist cu functionalitate inalta) and she is struggling due to her family's discrimination and the prohibitive cost of legal aid (lawyer, court case, court taxes and so on).

Your support would show her that she isn't alone in a world that isn't made for her, full of people who only want to belittle her and step on her. She has very many negative experiences with people who were supposed to have her best interest at heart.

With your support I hope to find legal aid for her so she can finally get her inheritance from the grasps of her aunt and uncles, or, if we find a decent pro bono lawyer willing to take her case, I hope to help her put a roof over her old cottage located in a remote mountain village.

This is Maria in the present, wearing a dress she made herself.

A few of her dresses, depicted here:

I am Oana, Maria's life partner. We've been a couple since 2011. Below are the 2 of us in 2012, at university. Maria is the one in all black, with black hair.

We hoped we didn’t need to resort to crowdfunding, but ultimately we have no other choice. The story is long an convoluted, but to put it briefly, it's divided in 2 parts that make Maria's quality of life and mental health extremely poor. (If you want to hear all the nitty gritty details, more information will be provided later.)

1. Homophobia by family

Maria is an orphan, her father having died when she was 9. She's been living with her extended family (fraternal aunt and grandma), in the family home for all her childhood and adolescence. In 2013, Maria's aunt (who lived with her) figured out Maria is queer, confronted her about it and then kicked her out of the house. The only other person living in the house at the time was Maria's elderly grandma (who the house legally belonged to) but she had dementia, and wasn't made aware of this argument. Because she's autistic and conflict avoidant, Maria didn't get into arguments with her aunt, she simply packed up her things and left. The two of us moved from rental apartment to rental apartment until we decided to move in my parent's house, and we’ve been living with them ever since.

2. Marginalization by family

Maria's grandmother passed away in 2020, and the inheritance formalities began at a Notary Public. Maria doesn't come from a rich family, her grandma was an accountant and her grandpa worked in the theater but they managed to gather a few assets which, upon their death, they wanted to be equally distributed to their children and/or grandchildren. Her grandparents built a modest 2 story house in Cluj-Napoca and owned a number of plots of land scattered in the countryside. The house isn't in a great condition at all, but it's located in a good neighborhood, on walking distance from the city center, and some houses there (in good condition) can sell for up to 1 Million Euro. The house is listed to value 230.000 Euro on in the city tax records. Market value is usually more than the tax value, so this is the minimum value of the house. Maria's share is 10%, so she's entitled to at least 23.000 Euro. That's all she's asking: for her fair share of the inheritance she's legally entitled to.

However, after her grandmother died, Maria's aunts and uncles refused to allow her to get her inheritance. They refused to buy her share of the inheritance and they also refused to sell the house, or let anyone but the homophobic aunt live there. In this situation, Maria is legally entitled to open a civil suite against her family to force them to give her her own share. However, such legal action is extremely expensive and is known to last years.

There are the lawyer's fees, which were estimated to be around 3.500 Euro, and there's a court fee called Taxa de Timbru Judiciar (which you need to pay to the state for any court case). This tax is 5% of the house's price, and the one who opens the court case has to pay it (in this case it would be Maria). Maria doesn't afford this tax. There is a hope to have the court waive the fee on behalf of Maria's lack of sufficient income, Autism Diagnosis and identity as an LGBT individual, but's not guaranteed.

We actually found an NGO that was supposed to help Maria get her inheritance with the assistance of a pro bono lawyer, and have this fee waived. However, this only lead to yet another problem which left Maria absolutely devastated:

3. Discrimination and ableism by Lawyer

Even though her pro bono lawyer chose to support her case, they proved to be very tone deaf to an Autistic person's communication needs. Even though they were told that Maria is Autistic and explained what it means, the Lawyer communicated with Maria very poorly, refused to answer direct and simple questions, refused to file the legal action at the agreed date even though they decided together to do so (and signed a contract stating this). More than that, when Maria asked why the Lawyer decided not to file her claim, they got aggravated and blamed Maria of being rude and incosiderate, stating that they no longer have patience for her. For romanian speakers I can provide screenshots of the emails. Knowing that autistics can sometimes be blunt, I personally helped Maria formulate each and every message and email she addressed this Lawyer and I don’t believe she was rude or impolite at all.

Regardless of anyone else's opinion, or of the misunderstanding that took place, the bottom line is that this Lawyer decided to drop Maria's case and told her to go find someone else because they "lost their patience with her".

Why does Maria desperately need her inheritance?

Except for the fact that it's the right and lawful thing for her to have access to it, I believe she has suffered enough at the hands of her family. While she lived in her grandparents' house, while she was still a minor, her aunt verbally bullied and mocked her, made her (a child with no income only a miserable orphan's pension) pay for all her household expenses, on top of the fact that Maria's mom (who lived in a tiny social housing apartment with Maria's younger sister) did contribute to the expenses and sent the aunt money every month. Her entire life with her aunt she was treated like an unwanted parcel. Even my parents who are slightly homophobic, have accepted Maria and treat her like she's a sibling or cousin of mine, include her in celebrations, buy her gifts and are generally supportive of her needs which is a million times more than her aunt and uncles ever did.

Last year we celebrated our 30th birthday (we're just a few weeks apart). We invited everyone to celebrate with us. Here we are surrounded by my family, my aunts and uncles and cousins. They all showed up for us. Maria only had 4 guests, her mom and her sister with their respective partners. The rest of her relatives didn't even bother to send her a text message saying "happy birthday".

As a young person she suffered enough pain and neglect and poverty.

Maria has always been a talented, skilled and dedicated artist. In school and university she was continuously given scholarships for academic merit, but even that couldn't make up for the loss of her dad and she lived in instability and distress, plagued by depression and strong autistic meltdowns.

Maria while living in her grandparents' house. After a very bad depressive episode, she shaved off her waist-long hair. She was 17.

She studied Painting in university, and after that she taught herself how to sew and to make patters. Out of this hobby, sewing, we developed a tiny-tiny business comprised of me and her, and we create dresses and corsets.

The first dress she ever made which became famous online (and photos of which can be found everywhere without any links to the original designer, Maria). This dress was entirely sewn by hand, because at that time she didn't have a sewing machine.

Since 2017 Maria, with my logistical help, completed HUNDREDS of commissions for clients all over the world. She is an extraordinary artist, capable of making made-to-measure beautiful dresses for people she's never seen in person. She can make dresses for petite women and folx, she can make dresses for plus size people and everyone in between and I've never heard of a customer complain about the quality or the fit of the garment.

Maria and I have been in a relationship for 12 years. All this time we scraped by while living with my parents, and saving up as much as we could. It took us more than a decade of scraping and penny pinching, but we managed to save enough to achieve our life-long dream: buy a old house in the countryside, in the mountains. So in 2021 we achieved Maria's greatest dream ever since she was a child: to have a house of our own, away from the ruckus of the city.

We bought an abandoned cottage in Hunedoara county, and proceeded to renovate it and bring it to the 21st century.

There is no plumbing, no running water and no gas, no heating system. For 2 years we've been funding repairs and renovations out of our own pocket, but now we've run dry. More about our cottage here .Our Cottage

If Maria's family (aunts and uncles involved in the inheritance) were decent people, they would have found a way to let Maria have her share. Her share would have been more than enough to finish everything we needed to renovate and build at the cottage.

Trying to do a bit of work at the cottage and to also fight for Maria's inheritance we've run into debt, borrowing money from my dad and from Maria's sister.

All in all, everything Maria has ever wanted was to be left alone to live a decent life and be treated fairly. It hasn’t happened. She’s extremely demoralised and wants to give up, and it breaks my heart to see her so mistreated.

Those of you who know her work, or for those who only now discover it, tell me if an artist THIS GOOD deserves such treatment from their own lawyer and their own family.

I'm feeling bad to ask for donations, so I'm going to remind all of you to please check out our website: MARIA HELLER DESIGNS . Maybe you find something you like for yourself or a loved one.

I also came up with some other reward ideas, of items that were left unsold from previous years.

All these years, since Maria first posted photos of her now legendary Emaleth dress, the support of all our followers, collaborators and cusomers has been priceless! Know that if you purchased something small or something big from us, you have actively helped up buy that cottage! That cottage was purchased BY YOU. Dress by dress, corset by corset, stitch by stitch and happy customer by happy customer!

A few photos of customers wearing dresses made by Maria.

I only hope we'll navigate this rough patch and that Maria will be able to continue to surprise all of us (me included) with her out of this world creations!