When people think about domestic abuse, financial control is often overlooked. Yet financial abuse, also known as economic abuse, is one of the most powerful and enduring ways an abuser maintains control. For many women, it is the reason leaving feels impossible.

This International Women’s Day, we want to highlight what financial abuse looks like and where support can be found.

What Is Financial Abuse?

Financial abuse happens when one partner controls another’s access to money, employment, or financial decision‑making. Its purpose is to create dependency and limit choices. Unlike physical abuse, its effects can last long after a relationship ends.

Common Forms of Economic Abuse

Restricted access to accounts
An abuser may control all bank accounts, online banking details, or household finances. You may be given an allowance, required to ask permission to spend money, or prevented from accessing your own income or benefits.

Forced debt
Many women are pressured into taking out loans, credit cards, or acting as guarantors, sometimes without their full knowledge. This debt can damage credit scores and create long‑term financial insecurity, even after separation.

Monitoring spending
Constant scrutiny of purchases, receipts, or bank statements is another form of control. What may be presented as “budgeting” is often about surveillance, intimidation, and erosion of independence.

Withholding child maintenance
After separation, financial abuse can continue through delayed or refused child maintenance payments. This places strain on the parent with care and directly affects children’s wellbeing.

Why Financial Abuse Keeps Women Trapped

Leaving an abusive relationship often requires money for housing, legal advice, childcare, and daily living. When finances have been controlled or destroyed, women may feel they have no viable way out. This is not a lack of strength; it is the result of deliberate, sustained control.

Support Is Available

There are many support agencies out there to help including:

Rights of Women is a vital charity offering free, confidential legal advice to women affected by domestic abuse, including financial and economic abuse. Through specialist advice lines, Rights of Women help women understand their legal rights around finances, separation, child maintenance, housing, and protection from ongoing abuse, empowering them to make informed decisions about their future.

Women’s Aid provides vital, confidential support to women and children experiencing all forms of domestic abuse, including financial abuse, through helplines, refuges, and practical guidance.

You Are Not Powerless

If you feel financially trapped, you are not powerless and you are not alone. Financial abuse thrives in silence, but help exists. With the right support and legal advice, it is possible to regain control, protect your future, and move forward safely.

This International Women’s Day, we stand with women reclaiming their independence financially, legally, and emotionally.

For more information contact a member of our Family Law Team today in confidence on:

01484 533076

Clare Wilson

Family Solicitor