Financial Abuse & Coercive Control Checker UK 2025 — Recognise the Signs & Know Your Rights
Financial abuse — where one partner controls, restricts, or exploits the other’s money or economic resources — is a form of domestic abuse. Coercive control, which includes financial control, has been a criminal offence since 2015. This guide helps you recognise the signs, understand your legal rights, and find support.
If you are concerned about your partner seeing this page, you can close it using the back button. National Domestic Abuse Helpline: 0808 2000 247 (24 hours, free). Refuge: 0808 2000 247. Men’s Advice Line: 0808 801 0327.
What Is Financial Abuse?
Financial abuse is a form of domestic abuse and coercive control. It involves one person controlling, restricting, or exploiting another person’s financial resources in order to maintain power and control over them. It can happen in intimate partner relationships, between family members, and in situations where one person is caring for another.
Financial abuse often occurs alongside other forms of abuse but can also occur independently. Victims of financial abuse may have little or no access to money of their own, making it very difficult to leave an abusive situation. Understanding your rights and the support available is a vital first step.
Signs of Financial Abuse
- Your partner controls all household money and gives you an “allowance”
- You are not allowed to work, or your partner sabotages your employment
- You must account for every penny you spend
- Your wages are taken from you
- Debts have been run up in your name without your knowledge or agreement
- You have been pressured to sign documents, transfer property, or take out loans
- You are prevented from accessing your own bank accounts
- You are kept uninformed about household finances
- You feel afraid to make financial decisions or spend money
- Your credit score has been damaged without your knowledge
The Legal Framework
Coercive control (section 76, Serious Crime Act 2015) is a criminal offence. It covers a pattern of behaviour that is: repeated or continuous; used to have a serious effect on you; and controlling or coercive. It does not require physical violence. Conviction carries up to 5 years imprisonment.
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 expanded the definition of domestic abuse to expressly include economic abuse (unreasonable restriction of financial resources), and introduced Domestic Abuse Protection Notices and Orders (DAPNOs) which can be issued by police or applied for through the family court.
Emergency Financial Support
If you need to leave a situation of financial abuse, several sources of support exist:
- Emergency accommodation — local councils have a legal duty to provide safe accommodation with support services for domestic abuse victims and their children.
- Domestic abuse charities — Refuge, Women’s Aid, Mankind, and others can provide emergency practical and financial support.
- Banks’ vulnerable customer support — most major UK banks have teams trained to help domestic abuse victims set up independent accounts, recover joint accounts, and deal with fraudulent debts.
- HMRC support — changes to tax credits, Child Benefit, and Universal Credit can often be made rapidly in domestic abuse situations.
- Emergency legal aid — legal aid is available for domestic abuse victims in family court proceedings without a means test in many circumstances.
Frequently Asked Questions
On divorce, financial abuse (including economic abuse) is a factor courts can consider in financial remedy proceedings. If your partner deliberately depleted assets, ran up debts in your name, or transferred assets to avoid sharing them, the court has powers to add back those assets in the division. In criminal proceedings for coercive control, compensation orders can be made against perpetrators.
If you were coerced into taking on debt, you may have grounds to challenge it. Contact the lender and explain the circumstances — most have specialist teams for financial abuse. Credit reference agencies can add a “notice of correction” explaining the circumstances of adverse entries. In extreme cases, debts obtained by fraud (forged signatures, identity theft) are not legally yours at all.