Juliette* had planned to tell her husband about her purchase, but it was too late. She had used her credit card to buy a bathing suit top for the 2010 Spring Break trip her family was leaving for in just a few minutes. Her mother, who was joining them on the trip, as well as their son and daughter, were ready to jump in the car and start the vacation. But her husband — who would often check her credit card statements to monitor her spending — had just discovered the latest purchase she had made, a swimsuit top. And as he had done so many times before, he unleashed a poisonous verbal attack on Juliette for buying something without his permission. This time, however, the attack took place in front of their children and her mother at the couple’s home in a wealthy Midwest suburb.
Juliette knew her husband would respond this way, but she also knew she had done nothing wrong. After all, it was not like she had bought a car without his knowledge — it was a bathing suit. Once she moved past the shock, she asked her husband if he was ready to leave. “No,” he said. “I’m waiting for something that’s being delivered.” A few moments later, a big delivery truck lumbered down Juliette’s street and unloaded a sparkling new convertible in front of her home that, at the time, had a list price of around $140,000. Her husband had bought it for himself. “I had my bathing suit top, and he had his ... convertible,” Juliette said.
The Exertion of Power
It was a surreal moment, but an all-too-familiar scenario that will resonate with millions of domestic partners — primarily women — who have endured financial abuse. There is no hard data on the exact number of victims. However, the National Network to End Domestic Violence believes that up to 99 percent of the nation’s 10 million domestic violence victims experience financial abuse. “A lot of the time when there is financial abuse, I would say there are also lots of other unhealthy dynamics,” said Doriel Jacov, a New York-based psychotherapist and owner of his own therapy practice. “There is an inherent power dynamic where one person is in a position of power over the other partner, and in the exertion of power can come a lot of different ways of treating a partner poorly.”
The most likely victims of financial abuse are aged 18 to 24, according to a 2025 survey by U.S. News and World Report. The abuse most often takes place in marriages (39 percent) or when the victim lives with their abuser (35 percent). There is a lot of crossover between domestic violence and financial abuse, which is why domestic violence groups often step in to provide support.
“When we are talking about financial abuse, we are talking about it within the context of domestic violence,” said Kim Pentico, senior director of economic justice at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, which oversees federally-recognized coalitions of domestic violence groups in every state and U.S. territory. “At the center of all domestic violence is power and control. And there is no difference when financial abuse is used as one of those tactics of control. Our definition of domestic violence is a pattern of coercive behavior you use to intimidate and threaten a current or former partner.”
While financial abuse shares characteristics with domestic violence, it has its own definition, which can be largely boiled down to “when one intimate partner has control over the other partner’s ability to access, acquire, use or maintain economic resources, which diminishes the victim’s capacity to support themselves and forces intentional dependence.” Common examples of financial abuse include not allowing a spouse or partner to get their own bank account, dictating how and when they can spend money, preventing them from working or choosing their career, sabotaging their career by making them miss work or constantly calling them, forcing them to live on a meager budget for necessities and clothing, and forcing them to turn over their paycheck.
Victims are not only spouses and partners. The elderly are vulnerable to financial abuse to the tune of around $28 billion per year, according to the National Council on Aging. Abusers are family members 47 percent of the time, while 6.7 percent were strangers.
30 Pages of Instructions Just on How to Wash the Dishes
All 50 states and Washington, D.C. have laws against elder abuse, though the specifics can vary, according to the Department of Justice. For example, Alabama’s laws against elder abuse apply to those aged 60 and up, while Tennessee’s minimum age is 65. The legal protections against financial abuse for those who are not seniors are far fewer.
At a federal level, financial abuse was added in 2022 to the Violence Against Women Act, a law passed in 1994 that helps prevent domestic violence and respond to it when it takes place. This opened up, among other things, funding for organizations that help financial abuse victims, Pentico said. At a state level, only a handful of jurisdictions have legal options for financial abuse victims, Pentico noted: California, where coercive control is considered domestic abuse; Hawaii, where coercive control is considered domestic abuse; Nevada, where financial abuse is not a criminal offense, but a survivor can seek relief of up to $10,000 in a civil case; New York, which has a law barring creditors from collecting on debt gained as a result of financial abuse; and Utah, where coercive control is considered domestic abuse in child custody cases.
Coercive control is described as manipulative behavior meant to take away someone’s freedom and control. That designation opens the door for financial abuse to trigger court-mandated measures such as domestic violence protective orders, also called restraining orders, which require the abuser to stay away from the victim. Two court cases illustrate how important coercive control laws are. In a 2023 family law case in California, a judge awarded the plaintiff a restraining order against her husband because of coercive control, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. “The client’s husband had not been physically violent toward her, but had written nearly 200 pages of rules for his wife to follow, including roughly 30 pages of instructions just on how to wash the dishes,” the Tribune wrote.
Another key court case came in 2025 in Washington, where a judge granted a wife a domestic violence protective order against her husband because of coercive control, according to the Family Violence Appellate Project. Court documents reveal the husband’s horrific abuse that led to the protection order. He threatened to kill himself when his wife asked him to care for their daughter on his day off, one in which he planned to go snowboarding, the documents stated. He berated his wife for picking a Halloween costume for their daughter without asking for his input. He constantly brought up his wife’s past abortions and, in one case, said, “she might ‘want to kill a[nother] child because commitment means nothing to [her.]’” In another instance, he berated his wife again for keeping him awake while she fed their daughter in the middle of the night, then told their daughter: “Papa doesn’t get to be happy and cheerful because his wife is a selfish c[***].” The husband unsuccessfully appealed the judge’s decision.
Though the legal system has a long way to go in prosecuting financial abuse, there is progress outside of landmark cases, said Julia Rodgers, a family law attorney and CEO of prenuptial legal service HelloPrenup. “In the civil context, financial abuse is increasingly recognized in divorce proceedings, and courts can account for it when dividing marital assets, awarding alimony, or addressing division of marital funds,” Rodgers told The Independent in an email.
The Whole Family Suffers
As the American legal system takes its time to recognize financial abuse as a legitimate crime, stories like Juliette’s continue to pile up. While the direct victims of financial abuse suffer the most, the impact extends to children in the home, too. “I think it was pretty early on when I was maybe … seven or eight, where I knew something was different with my family than other families and that there was just a lot of secrets that people were not supposed to find out about how things happened at home,” said Ruth,* who eventually founded her own personal finance coaching practice.
Ruth and her sisters grew up watching their dad abuse their mother in multiple ways, including financially. She remembers going to a cell phone store with her family once when she was in high school. Her father wanted to buy a phone plan that her mother did not think was the best choice. When she voiced her concern, he silenced and shamed her. “He shut her down and told her, ‘No, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I know what I’m talking about. I’m the smart one,’” she said. “He would do that in a very mean, aggressive way.”
And like so many other women, Ruth watched her father amass a collection of high-end toys while she, her sisters and mother scraped by on secondhand clothes. “He got to spend the money on the things that he wanted,” she said. “So he would buy a jet ski, guns, the cars that he wanted, but then my mom had to always take us to thrift stores to get clothes.”
For many years, escape seemed impossible. Then in 2003, her mom left her father and then divorced him. Ruth said her mom had saved around $300 and she and her sisters stayed with their pastor’s family for a week, then moved into her grandma’s house. In the meantime, her mom faced the realities of starting over after being in a financially abusive relationship. “It was very hard for my mom because it is not like she had her own bank account,” Ruth said. “She didn’t have anything, a car; she didn’t have a [credit card] to her name.”
Paying the Price
Those first months away from Ruth’s father illustrate the difficulties financial abuse victims face when they leave their abuser. The psychological, emotional and financial damage can last years, presenting major hurdles as victims try to move forward. “Because financial abuse frequently occurs with emotional abuse, victims tend to internalize the message that they are incapable of managing money or surviving independently,” Rodgers said.
Juliette felt that after she divorced her husband in 2017, after more than two decades of marriage. She walked away from her husband with substantial assets from the divorce settlement — she had enough money to do whatever she wanted to do, she said. And yet the abuse she had internalized lived on, and emerged in habits she recognized after moving into a new condo. “I remember wanting patio furniture, and I called my sister to ask if I could get a few things from Target,” Juliette said. “I think that is when she started to realize, just the depth of it.”
Internalized lies and doubts about surviving independently are just part of the damage financial abuse does. Victims also face depression and anxiety, Rodgers said, which can be more severe when mixed with other types of abuse. Ruth said she has suffered hundreds of panic attacks since graduating from high school in 2008. “It got to the point where … I couldn’t leave my apartment without having a panic attack,” she said. Extensive therapy has helped her overcome her anxiety. “I still kind of struggle with planes and driving long distances by myself, but it is getting better,” she said. One of her sisters also dealt with panic attacks. There were moments when just the fear of having a panic attack triggered more attacks, a condition known as “panic disorder.”
Rebuilding Lives
Yet for all the pain that victims endure, many overcome the seemingly insurmountable toll financial abuse took on them. Ruth learned everything she could about personal finance in her 30s and realized she — and other women — are more than capable of running their financial lives. She launched her own financial coaching business in 2019. “I really believe in teaching women to listen to themselves, listen to their bodies, [and] if they have looked at all the choices and they feel this is right for them to learn to build that confidence to trust themselves,” she said. “Because I think when women are trusting themselves, they are so powerful.”
Like Ruth, Juliette now runs her own coaching business. Launched in 2020, her practice focuses on toxic relationships and narcissistic abuse, themes she knows well. Her own experiences with a coach opened her eyes to the value of helping clients build awareness about their circumstances and who they are. She now carries that on to others who seek her expertise. “When I work to help empower them and put out a hand to help them up, I get empowered,” she said. “I feel like I stand stronger.”
Readers in the US can call the domestic violence hotline on 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). For readers in the UK, the national domestic abuse helpline offers support on 0808 2000 247, or you can visit the Refuge website. There is a dedicated men's advice line on 0808 8010 327. Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.
