What is Financial Abuse?
Financial abuse is a form of abuse when one partner has control over the others’ access to economic resources, which diminishes the victim’s capacity to support themselves and forces them to depend on the perpetrator financially.
Financial abuse happens in 99% of domestic abuse cases and is often one of the biggest reasons why victims stay.
Financial abuse is a tactic used by abusers to gain power and control over their victims in a relationship. The forms of financial abuse may be subtle and can include tactics to conceal information, limit the victim’s access to assets, or reduce accessibility to the family finances.
Financial abuse is incredibly isolating because victims are financially dependent on their abusers, which traps them in the relationship. Without resources, they are unable to see a way out of their situation.
Here are some ways in which people are abused financially:
*Please note that this is not a comprehensive list of how financial abuse can occur, as my story below will demonstrate.
- Controlling or spending your money: This may involve controlling your use of or access to money you have earned or saved. They may also use your assets for their benefit without asking, including taking money or using credit cards without permission.
- Ruining your credit history: They might do this by running up limits and then not paying bills, claiming to make payments, or putting bills in your name but not following through.
- Feeling entitled to your money or assets: They might demand you turn over your paycheck, passwords, and credit cards. They might also expect you to pay for their bills or their obligations or require you to bail them out of difficult financial situations.
- Interfering with your finances: This can involve using offers to help with your budget or financial decisions as a cover for gaining control over your finances. They might confiscate your paycheck or other sources of income, intercept or open your bank statements and other financial records, or threaten to lie to officials and claim you are “cheating or misusing benefits.”
Financial abuse — along with emotional, physical, and sexual abuse — includes behaviors to intentionally manipulate, intimidate, and threaten the victim to trap the victim in the relationship. Sometimes, financial abuse is present throughout the entire relationship; other times, financial abuse becomes more prevalent when the survivor is attempting to leave or has left the relationship.
It’s one thing I wish I could scream from the rooftops when people ask me why I stayed for so long.
I COULDN’T AFFORD TO LEAVE!
At 36 years old, I do not know what it feels like to have financial stability as an adult. My marriage was one economic crisis after the next. His hours working as an electrician became unstable, so he switched careers, but there was always an unpleasant gap in pay. Another year, he took on an overseas contracting position, but the taxes were filed improperly because he falsified the dates of his time overseas. He was a day short of the period required to be considered tax-free and blamed the accountant for the error. The IRS audited us, going as far as to threaten to take our home if payments weren’t made. It felt like we’d get close to stability, and the next crisis would come. During crisis times, credit cards were used to get by, but after the crisis, they would need to be paid off. I read and re-read Dave Ramsay's books. I bought the envelope wallet. I showed my ex the amount of money he was making and begged him to budget with me because there was no reason for us to be constantly in a state of barely scraping by, and yet we were. Budgeting was hit or miss and became a thing I was terrified of. I knew it would be a matter of working together to agree on finances to fix our constant hole. Still, he always came to the table with an attitude that demonstrated how unhappy he was to be budgeting.
Budgeting put him on the defensive as if my constant requests to better our financial situation were a direct attack on him. He needed me to acknowledge that I was part of the problem and that it wasn’t only him spending the money. He had a habit of spending money when and how he pleased. It was always justifiable—a tool he needed for work—a trip to the hardware store for a house project. He got a new set of golf clubs because he was so stressed from work. He needed a motorcycle because we shared a vehicle. There wasn’t enough for two car payments, and he needed a way to get to work so I could have the car to take the kids places.
I developed a deeply rooted fear of making purchases, sweating nervously as I approached the checkout lane because I was never quite sure if the payment would go through. I felt extremely guilty whenever I bought myself anything, often apologizing profusely for needing something small that would affect our budget. I ensured he had a nice gift at Christmas, birthdays, or anniversaries, even though I often received small, simple gifts in return. I always smiled and said I’d prefer the money toward my gift to be used on the kids anyway, but the deeply rooted feeling of being unworthy of gift-giving sank in.
Our oldest daughter noticed this discrepancy at a young age and made it her mission to provide me with nice gifts. She would remind him to buy me a present and dejectedly tell me that she wanted to buy me something, but he was annoyed at the reminder. At first, she made me gifts by hand until other adults in her life took her to buy me a present.
The obvious question is: why didn’t I get a job? Without a formal education, any job I could pick up wouldn’t cover the cost of daycare. Later, my ex began working at a high-demand job, and his shift would often switch from days to nights. There were times I expressed my helpless feelings, asking if there was any way we could work out the budget for me to attend school so that I could contribute financially and relieve some of the burden from his shoulders. My pleas were always met with eloquent expressions of love and sacrifice, promises to commit to a budget, and reminders that I didn’t need to work.
Except, I felt worthless.
If I could bring in only some money, it would even out the scale. I hoped he would somehow wake up and see how desperately I was fighting for our financial stability or that he’d see me as worthy of time and affection. Eventually, I knew that the end of the marriage was near. I began hoping to make a career online to offer myself some semblance of stability, as my only other option was to move in with my parents.
Despite making around $100,000 a year, we lived paycheck to paycheck. There were no savings or college funds for the kids. We constantly lived on the brink of financial disaster. Bills were almost always paid late because there was never enough money.
So, when the shit really hit the fan, I had no way out.
After starting a new job, leaving the kids and me in Florida, and cashing out his stocks, he blacked out in a hotel room in New Orleans and Venmoed nearly $3,000 to an unknown person. He maintains memory loss to this day that “someone must have hacked his phone.”
After this incident, which I had hoped would be a one-time terrible event, he would continually have nights out. I’d wake up the following day to find a drained bank account and vague or defensive answers hurled in my face.
It was the first time we had any savings to speak of, and I watched it rapidly drain away by a defensive, angry man. I clearly didn’t understand the stress of supporting two households and he had needs to maintain. He was told point-blank that he would be fired if he missed any more work, but he still kept taking sick days. My stomach churned nervously when he dramatically sniffed or coughed to prove to me just how sick he was.
This pattern continued for months before, after missing a flight to visit our son for his birthday and around $800 blown in one night, he finally confessed that the money was spent on lap dances and champagne. That’s when it should have ended.
I was working up the courage to tell him I wanted a divorce when he drove off an overpass in a BMW I didn’t know he had purchased. I can’t adequately describe the sense of dread that overcame me after that phone call from the hospital. I knew it was expected that I would fly to be by his side, forgetting everything that had happened, and to be forgiving because he almost died, but there wasn’t any money for me to fly. I couldn’t even afford to drive.
I spent weeks anticipating him to be arrested for a DUI and worrying about how I would put food on the table for our kids. How would I pay the utility bills? The instability of my former partner, paired with the ever-present financial worry, paralyzed me. I felt like I needed to keep him somehow stable to prevent another event like the accident from occurring.
For months, I attempted to plan my exit while trying to ensure that he was in a stable enough position to handle the official news of the divorce. When he expressed despair at being unable to wake up to go to work, I called him daily to make sure he was waking up in time. It wasn’t until I caught him lying about attending work, pretending like he was on the highway driving when he was really in another city, that I called my dad to ask for help.
Without my Dad stepping in to help, I wouldn’t have been able to leave because, despite everything that had happened, I was completely reliant on my ex financially, despite my efforts to support myself and my children.
I was lucky to have that assistance and a safe place to go. I have heard so many stories from other women who didn’t have any outside source of financial aid and were effectively trapped.
Financial abuse, much like other covert forms of abuse, can be challenging to recognize. However, it is one of the most powerful ways of keeping a victim trapped.
**Please note: I am not a mental health professional. I am writing based on my own experiences with emotional abuse. If you are experiencing abuse and need professional help, please seek out a trauma-informed therapist**
