Financial abuse: A primer

You might be experiencing financial abuse without even realizing it.

Is your partner entitled to more of the family money than you are? Do you have to ask them for money? Do they get fun money while you get scraps?

You might be in a financially abusive relationship.

Financial abuse is present in almost all abusive relationships—and often, it is the first type of abuse, the necessary prerequisite that traps the victim and enables every other abusive behavior.

I’ve been reluctant to write about financial abuse, because there are so many good books and articles on the topic. It feels a bit like adding one more piece of paper to a pile about to topple over.

Yet so many of my readers share stories of financial abuse, without even knowing that’s what they’re doing. These are competent, brilliant women, often with high-powered jobs and a strong work ethic. Yet they’ve been nearly completely controlled by their partner’s financial preferences, and the financial abuse has made it nearly impossible to leave.

So I thought it might be helpful to have a primer on financial abuse, how it works, and what to look for. I find that many guides to financial abuse do little more than list warning signs, without writing about the power dynamics that underlie them. That power is crucial to financial abuse. The meaning of an action changes significantly depending on who is doing it.

A child stealing $5 from a parent is doing something wrong, but is not engaged in financial abuse. But a parent stealing from a child? That’s a whole different scenario. Similarly, a woman transferring small sums to her account so she can leave her abuser is protecting her children, not abusing her partner. But a person transferring small sums of money so that he can have more than his partner is absolutely engaged in abuse.

Context matters.

What is financial abuse?

Financial abuse is the financial exploitation and control of another person. The most common scenario is when an abusive man uses money to trap and control his partner—often, though not always, when he is the higher earner and controls access to the money.

Financial abuse can manifest in hundreds of scenarios, but what they all share in common is using money to erode a person’s control over their own life. If you can’t make the same financial decisions as your partner, if your partner uses money to control you, you are likely being financially abused.

Signs of financial abuse

Financial abuse is a little different from some other forms of abuse. That’s because a single isolated behavior may not be abusive, but the same behavior repeated over time may be.

For example, it is always abusive to call your partner a bitch. It is not always abusive to forget to pay a bill, but a repeated pattern of apparent forgetting can create a financially abusive environment.

Similarly, behaviors that are financially abusive in a normal marriage can be perfectly fine when you’re planning to leave an abusive marriage. To leave, you may need to hide money from your partner, or take out a secret credit card. To do these things when you’re planning to continue in the marriage—or in an attempt to take more than your fair share—is abuse.

The hallmark of financial abuse is using money to control another person and wield power. In the financially abusive relationship, one person has the financial power (though not necessarily the earning power!) and the other does not.

Some common signs of financial abuse include:

• Limiting a partner’s access to basic financial resources, when such resources are present and available.

• Not allowing a partner full insight into the family’s finances.

• One partner getting a greater share of family resources.

• Splitting money inequitably. For example, an equitable split requires partners to give to the common pot proportional to their income. An inequitable split requires the partner who earns less to contribute as much as the higher earner.

• Stealing money from the partner or from the family, especially in an attempt to exert control. For example, a man might stop contributing to the shared account if a woman asks him to change a behavior or threatens to leave him.

• Being very committed to preventing a partner from working, or to undermining their ability to work.

• Draining family financial accounts to prevent a partner from leaving, or to punish them from leaving.

• Refusing to work or earn money as a way to control a partner. Note that this is categorically different from genuinely being a stay-at-home parent who does meaningful labor. Here I am thinking of abusers who mooch off of their partners while offering little or nothing in return, as in this letter.

• Extracting labor from a partner without fair compensation. If one partner works for pay and the other stays home with the children, then the money from the working partner’s job should be split evenly—and if financially possible, the non-working parent should have a savings account to mitigate the risk of not working.

• Micromanaging a partner’s small purchases.

• “Allowing” yourself to make purchases that you won’t allow your partner to make.

• Refusing to fund a child or partner’s basic needs when there is sufficient money to do so.

• Prioritizing unnecessary expenses—fashionable clothing, hobbies, paying down debt at a faster rate—over necessary expenses like medical care and food.

Some common financial abuse scenarios

In thinking about financial abuse, it can be helpful to think about the big picture of the couple’s life together. Here are some common scenarios I see:

• The man makes more money than the woman, but expects them both to contribute equal shares to family finances. As a result, he has lots of spending money and she has none. She may even have to ask him to “help her” with basic expenses for the family or children. These expenses are treated as her expenses.

• A man aggressively polices his partner’s reasonable spending. No matter what she spends on basic needs, it’s considered too much. In some cases, he may try to put her on an unreasonable budget to prevent her from “overspending” on these needs.

• A man controls a woman’s access to family money. She can’t see all of the accounts, or has to ask him to put money into the shared account.

Women can be financially abusive, but this is a rare scenario. Moreover, financial abuse from women usually co-occurs with mental health issues, not with other abuse. For example, a woman might have a compulsive spending problem, and overspend family money, but is unlikely to attempt to use money to control her partner or prevent him from leaving.

When experts (or friends or family) work with a couple on financial abuse issues, it is important to be mindful of power dynamics. The more power a person has in the relationship and the wider society, the more financial control they can exert, and the more harmful that control can be. A person using financial abuse to control their partner, prevent them from leaving, and keep them in a state of unnecessary financial peril is far more dangerous than a person whose mental health is causing them to make poor financial decisions. The former scenario is essentially untreatable, while the latter often responds really well to treatment.

Children, too, can be financially abused—and this is where we do more frequently see women becoming abusers, because mothers hold power relative to children.

When children are financially abused, it is often in an attempt to gain compliance. A parent might refuse to help pay for college if they dislike a child’s romantic partner, or refuse to pay for lessons the child takes if the child “misbehaves.”

Support for the child generally needs to exist independent of the child’s behavior—with some room for flexibility when the child is an adult. For example, it is unreasonable for a parent to continue paying indefinitely for a child’s housing if a child refuses to stop using drugs. But if a parent volunteers to pay for something and can afford to do so, using payment to control daily behaviors outside of extreme situations is extremely manipulative.

What if one partner has problematic behavior around money?

Money should never be a tool of control. Using money to control another person is at the core of financial abuse.

Like most things in marriage, the dynamics of this tend to fall on gendered lines. When the man has the money problem, he still feels entitled to the money without accountability. When the woman has the money problem, it’s often an excuse to cut off all of her access to money and completely control her every move.

This is why I have to emphasize that even if one part has behaved irresponsibly with money, that does not mean they should lose all control over family finances. Moreover, the fact that one party has been irresponsible does not mean that the other party will behave responsibly or fairly. It certainly does not qualify them to make all financial decisions.

There are special circumstances that go beyond the scope of this article, but know that there is no situation in which your partner should be starving you, cutting off access to basic needs, or using money to prevent you from leaving—no matter what excuses they give.

Financial abuse, like all abuse, is about control. And once a partner has full control, it becomes very easy for them to control you in virtually all other domains. As such, financial abuse is the warning sign of a partner who may one day injure you.