Living with Debt: The Reality of Economic Abuse
When people hear the words “financial abuse,” they often imagine numbers lined up in columns, the sharp click of a calculator, the tension of a budget stretched too thin. But the truth moves more quietly, slipping beneath the surface of daily life. Financial abuse is not, at its heart, about money. It is about something deeper, something that shapes the air you breathe.
At its core, it is about control. Money becomes the riverbed, shaping and containing, redirecting the flow of a life until the current no longer feels like your own. What once moved freely now bends to someone else’s will.Financial abuse refers specifically to the control, restriction, misuse, or exploitation of money, credit, assets, or financial information. Economic abuse is broader. It includes financial abuse, but also behaviours that undermine a survivor’s ability to work, earn income, pursue education, access resources, or maintain economic independence.² ⁴
Johnson et al. (2022) described economic abuse as behaviours that interfere with a survivor's ability to acquire, use, and maintain economic resources, threatening economic security and the potential for self-sufficiency.²
Economic abuse is a mechanism of coercive control aimed at increasing dependence on an abusive partner and making leaving more difficult.² ⁴
“We’ll see what you do without my money!” Words uttered by my abuser when I asked for a divorce. But in the beginning, these loud, abrasive or even aggressive threats hiding the angry tantrums of an emotionally dysregulated child arrive as subtle whispers. At first, the control is imperceptible, disguised as concern or as a gentle insistence from someone who claims to know what’s best. A partner might suggest you rest instead of working, or passively question the cost of your pursuing higher education. It’s all in the name of care and concern for your or your family’s well-being. Maybe you find yourself justifying small purchases, or your partner insists on “helping you shop for groceries.” You notice that each decision you make is weighed, measured, or even dismissed. “It is easier this way.” “It’s less pressure on you.” They handle the finances, manage the household budget, or one person handles the money. What begins as help slowly leads to a loss of financial independence. Access fades, information is conveniently hidden, and every choice is tethered to permission.
For many years, I had to put up with the suffocating truth of financial abuse, and I know from personal experience how financial manipulation can quietly hold women in a state of captivity. What’s more, it didn’t end when I left. It didn’t end when the divorce was finalized. The economic abuse lingered for years post-divorce.
Recent Canadian data make clear that financial abuse is neither rare nor peripheral to intimate partner violence. Among women residing in Canadian facilities for victims of abuse on April 13, 2023, nearly half (49%) had experienced financial abuse. In Alberta, admissions to residential facilities increased by 72% compared with the previous 2020/2021 survey cycle.¹ While statistics are useful and numbers are startling, they do not fully capture women’s experiences. They cannot convey the weight of living with enduring financial instability or the long-term work required to rebuild. While statistics are useful and numbers are startling, they do not fully capture women’s experiences. Statistics fail to reveal the depth of the problem, the weight and burden of living in enduring instability.
Leaving doesn’t happen on a whim or as an incidental decision taken impulsively in the heat of the moment. Like me, women painstakingly navigate the process of assessing their own safety and, for some, their children’s safety, alone. Although every experience or situation is unique, women need to secure documents, signatures, spare cash, transportation, and a safe place to stay. In many cases, it requires a complete reinvention of self. Although leaving may mean a new name for some, it almost always means survivors having to rebuild from nothing, often having to fight just to hold on to their truth, having to explain and defend the harm that leaves an indelible mark.
The damage that many women have to contend with worsens the moment they cross the threshold. For countless women, economic abuse could look like:
Ruined credit or credit score
Job loss or loss of opportunities
Mounting legal bills
Unstable housing
Employment interference
Withholding access to money or financial information
Coerced debt
Continued financial control following separation² ⁴ ⁵
Thankfully for me, my credit score remained intact, but I certainly experienced all of the forms of economic abuse. Although leaving for me came later in life, after the children had grown and I had spent decades living in a state of emotional dysregulation. The sustained long-term financial abuse meant that starting over became a lesson in scarcity, patience, and the long work of recovery, which also includes establishing financial stability.
The true cost cannot be measured in dollars.
The true cost lives in the shadows of the debts that linger like dense fog. It eats at your confidence with every job that slips away and with the slow drain of what little savings remain. The cost of financial and economic abuse lives in the heaviness — the pain, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty abusers leave in their wake.
Johnson and colleagues revealed:
Economic abuse can create economic dependence and restrict a survivor’s ability to leave and establish independence.
Common tactics include economic control, economic exploitation, employment sabotage, coerced debt, and interference with access to resources.
Economic abuse is associated with significant financial, mental-health, physical-health, parenting, and quality-of-life consequences.²
Spearman et al. (2024) identify economic abuse as one of the major tactics of post-separation abuse, alongside psychological, legal, and other forms of abuse. Economic tactics after separation can prolong deprivation and provide former partners with continued avenues for control.³ Justice should never depend on whether a survivor has savings, credit, or someone to lend a hand. Too often, the systems meant to help ask for what has already been taken. When financial abuse is overlooked, survivors are left to navigate legal and financial systems that treat the aftermath as a personal failing, not as the mark of control.
While laws are beginning to catch up with the realities of financial and economic abuse within the broader scope of coercive control, in many cases, Abuse may also be mischaracterized as mutual conflict when survivors’ responses to coercion are interpreted without considering the broader pattern of power and control. Women often describe perpetrators deliberately provoking emotional reactions and later using those responses to portray them as unstable, reactive, or equally responsible for the abuse. A tactic I am well too familiar with. What’s more, the consequences do not fade quickly. Years pass, sometimes decades, and the effects linger. Financial abuse does not only take money. It takes health, time, opportunity, and dignity. It steals the ground needed to rebuild.
Considering the strain on social services to provide safe housing and access to resources, it’s time laws and the legal system hold abusers financially responsible for damages incurred by their victims as a result of the abuse. Financial and economic abuse are not limited to one type of relationship, survivor, or perpetrator. Naming the tactics, tracing the patterns, and speaking up about the true cost begin the work of restoration.
Each act of speaking up breaks the silence.
References
Heidinger, L. (2024). Canadian residential facilities for victims of abuse, 2022/2023. Juristat. Statistics Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2024001/article/00005-eng.htm Statistics Canada
Johnson, L., Chen, Y., Stylianou, A., & Arnold, A. (2022). Examining the impact of economic abuse on survivors of intimate partner violence: A scoping review. BMC Public Health, 22, 1014. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13297-4 PubMed Central (PMC)
Learning Network. (n.d.). Economic abuse: Coercive control tactics in intimate relationships. Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, Western University. https://www.gbvlearningnetwork.ca/our-work/infographics/economicabuse/index.html GBV Learning Network
Spearman, K. J., Vaughan-Eden, V., Hardesty, J. L., & Campbell, J. (2024). Post-separation abuse: A literature review connecting tactics to harm. Journal of Family Trauma, Child Custody & Child Development, 21(2), 145–164. https://doi.org/10.1080/26904586.2023.2177233 Penn State
Woman Abuse Council of Toronto. (2019). Hidden in the everyday: Financial abuse as a form of intimate partner violence in the Toronto area. https://womanact.ca/publications/hidden-in-the-everyday-financial-abuse-as-a-form-of-intimate-partner-violence-in-the-toronto-area/
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