There’s No Place Like Home Season Two Episode Six: Money

INTRO: This series comes with a content note – some of what you’ll hear is distressing. Please check the show notes for phone numbers you can contact to receive confidential support.

In this series abuse perpetrated by an intimate partner is described as “family violence”, “domestic abuse” or “domestic violence”. We acknowledge that production took place on what always has been, and always will be, Aboriginal land. 

TOMAS: When you leave, you’re taking everything with you… in terms of debt, your poor credit score. So you say I better stay in this or else I’m gonna have nothing. 

TARANG CHAWLA: My name is Tarang Chawla and my sister Niki was killed by her former partner in 2015. I’m a writer, lawyer and anti-violence advocate. I’m also the host of There’s No Place Like Home.

SIAN LEWIS: Financial abuse can be difficult to spot. But it’s basically using money to control another individual. An example might be restricting their access to money. It might be not sharing deep financial details, it might be getting an individual to take out a loan that they don’t want to take out, or they aren’t getting any benefit from. So it’s really any way that a person can control another individual by using money as the weapon.

TARANG CHAWLA: That was Sian Lewis. She is​​ CommBank’s Group Executive of Human Resources and works closely with the CommBank Next Chapter program, which helps victim-survivors of financial abuse get back on their feet and become financially independent. Sian is going to help us navigate this episode about financial abuse – which is disturbingly common in violent family relationships.

SIAN LEWIS: It appears in about 90% of cases that escalate to domestic and family violence. And as we know, one in four women and one in 13 men have experienced physical violence from an intimate partner. So financial abuse is very connected to those kinds of statistics.

TARANG CHAWLA: Despite the prevalence of financial abuse – which is present in up to 90 percent, according to research from Monash University – most people don’t realise how serious it is.

SIAN LEWIS: There’s actually been a recent National Community Attitudes Survey, which says that Australians are much less likely to see non-physical coercive control as domestic and family violence… and that includes emotional and financial abuse. So there’s still a lot of work. 

TARANG CHAWLA: According to a recent report by CommBank and Deloitte, financial abuse cost the Australian economy around $5.2 billion in 2020 – that number was primarily lost productivity and the price of mental health support for victim-survivors.

The direct cost to victim-survivors was even higher – a staggering $5.7 billion. That number is made up of money perpetrators steal or withhold from victim-survivors, money not paid for child support or joint bills, and from joint debt.

So let’s take some time to better understand this personally and financially devastating form of abuse.

Tomas* met Jim* more than a decade ago, but of course those aren’t their real names.

TOMAS: So this person is about 10 years my senior, is in a very high paid job, or was then, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. 

TARANG: Despite his high salary, Jim was between apartments and moved in with Tomas almost immediately. 

TOMAS: It was a bit confusing for me at the start as to why he didn’t have anywhere to stay or why he couldn’t get his own place pretty quickly.

TARANG CHAWLA: Tomas felt that asking his new partner about his financial situation wasn’t polite… or at least, he worried that asking about finances too early was a dating taboo.

TOMAS: I don’t really like asking people about financials and really personal things. Because of how professional he was, I was like, ‘oh, maybe this is normal.’ It was just always an excuse, an excuse, an excuse.

TARAN CHAWLA: In a romantic partnership, ‘what’s mine is yours’ is a common cultural mentality that many of us lean into. It’s also what many abusers exploit. And financial abuse tends to begin with the language of ‘sharing’. Jane Matts is a victim-survivor-advocate, law student, and founder of the Sisters in Law project. You met her in episode three. Jane says she was brought up to believe that couples share everything.

JANE MATTS: You did everything together, you put everything into a pool and you work together towards a common goal.

TARANG CHAWLA: So when Jane’s ex complained that he didn’t like his job, she offered to work full-time and support them, while he set up his own business. She considered it a smart financial move that they would eventually benefit from… together. 

JANE MATTS: I come from a business background. So I helped him to set up part of his business. His business had the potential to earn a lot of money.

ALEX BUNTON: “He said this one sentence, ‘Come on Buntsy open up.’ And he’d say it all the time ‘Come on, open up.’

TARANG CHAWLA: That was professional basketballer Alex Bunton, who you met earlier in the season. The man who abused Alex, who we’re calling Lucas, was in and out of employment. We’ve changed his name.

ALEX BUNTON: He needed to get in my mind. He needed to get me expressing myself to the point of like, I’m an open book. And I just kept remembering that. And looking back on that. It’s like, well, I really wish I didn’t open up.

TARANG CHAWLA: Lucas quickly eroded Alex’s emotional boundaries and made Alex feel guilty for being more successful than him. Then he began borrowing money from her.

ALEX BUNTON: He would be in and out of a job. So it would be this good, bad, good, bad, good, bad all the time. It was like, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay you back.’ Or ‘Don’t worry. This is how much I’m going to get paid this week, it’s going to be fine.’ And there would be excuse after excuse to try and reassure me that financially, you’re going to be fine. You logically try and think about reasoning: ‘Okay? Well, we are together, it’s going to be okay, financially, we’ll work through it.’

TARANG CHAWLA: Sian Lewis says it’s common for couples to share a bank account.

SIAN LEWIS: Usually there’s a partner who’s organised, wants to pay the bills or get involved in that. I think, from our perspective, it’s about always being comfortable and talking about the decisions that you make together.

TARANG CHAWLA: The warning signs come when a partner does something that makes you feel uncomfortable or out of control.

SIAN LEWIS: Where things begin to go wrong is ‘I’ve just made this big decision, and I didn’t discuss it with you’. And now that’s left us in a very different position.

TARANG CHAWLA: Alex Bunton would wake up in the morning and find Lucas had done just that.

ALEX BUNTON: We’d have a card together and he would just spend money and spend money and spend money and then if I questioned him about it, he would retaliate by doing something to either hurt me emotionally or mentally.

TARANG CHAWLA: In the beginning, Lucas would pay back some of the money.

ALEX BUNTON: He would put like, $2,000 in and then he’d spend $3000, you know, and it’d be like, ‘well, I put $2,000 in. What are you talking about? I still contributed.’ So what was there to complain about?

TARANG CHAWLA: But as the relationship continued, Lucas’s excuses became explosions of verbal abuse that made Alex afraid and disoriented. 

ALEX BUNTON: One moment, you’re okay with sharing a lot of things with your partner. And then the next minute, you’re in fear of sharing things with your partner, and then you go back to being okay with it.

It’s like this unexplainable mindset and feeling I know what’s wrong, but I can’t do anything about it, or we’re just going to fight or ‘Okay, I’ll just trust his word. I know he’s not in a good mood right now because he’s shared something about his mental health.

So it’s almost like constantly making finance this uncomfortable subject because I had the money, so it should be okay.

TARANG CHAWLA: Meanwhile, Jim served Tomas similar excuses early on in their relationship. It’s behaviour Tomas now knows is commonplace from financial abusers.

TOMAS: The day that they pay back will always come the next time and the next time, and it will often be followed by, I can’t pay you back this week, but let’s do something nice, you know, an overt act of love or, you know, showing that they’re dedicated to you. 

TARANG CHAWLA: Several years into his relationship with Jim, Tomas had become the primary provider.

TOMAS: It was always on me, not just financial, it sort of went into every facet. I would have to pick up his children, I would have to pay for their bills, I would have to pay for medical dental bills for his children, on top of cleaning, cooking, everything. I was a slave, essentially, a slave that was working very hard in my own job, just to pay for this situation.

TARANG CHAWLA: Tomas became afraid of his partner’s reactions whenever he brought up the subject of money or work…

TOMAS: I never used to say I’m paying for everything because that would be a trigger for him to blow up, either he would get very, very angry, or he would get very, very suicidal, which I know now is another sort of tactic. 

TARANG CHAWLA: Several years into their relationship, Tomas learned that Jim gambled. Not just the occasional bet. Jim gambled, a lot. And eventually, debt collectors began contacting Tomas. 

TOMAS: I would have debt collectors call me multiple times, be very threatening on the phone, because of money he owed. And when I would say I was a bit nervous, a bit afraid, he would say ‘just chill out, just calm down.’

TARANG CHAWLA: There’s a common misconception that financial abuse only happens when a man earns more than his female partner and, through his earnings, traps her into staying. 

This is far from the only way abuse occurs. In fact, research from the Australian National University published in 2021 found that a woman earning more than her male partner actually increases her chance of being impacted by domestic violence by 35 percent. That report notes that domestic abuse “is driven by violation of gender norms” and that women earning more money, does not always give them more power.

SIAN LEWIS: It’s actually less about how the money comes in, than how the money then gets managed. Many individuals buy assets in joint names, which is very sensible, generally in a functioning and healthy relationship, but it can become very difficult.

You may have contributed much more money towards the purchase of your flat or house. But if you’ve signed in joint names, and you haven’t got any record of the fact that you contributed 70%, and your partner’s only contributing 30%. That becomes a joint asset to which they continue to have an entitlement.

TARANG CHAWLA: This brings me back to Jane Matts, who was still carrying the entire financial load for her family after two years. Her partner’s business wasn’t making any money.

JANE MATTS: I’m paying for everything, I’m paying the mortgage I’m paying. We had an investment property at the time.  We had kids. We had lots of bills.

My health was deteriorating, I was working flat out, I was begging him to help me. I said, ‘I can’t keep going like this’ I was doing most of the work with the children. When I was home, I was doing the cooking, the cleaning, we didn’t have too many supports.

TARANG CHAWLA: When Jane did leave, she found out that her former partner’s business was not as hopeless as she’d been led to believe. In fact, it had been turning a profit for years.

JANE MATTS: I got the materials from the child support… In all those periods of time where I was working a full-time job and supporting everyone and paying for everything he was earning one year, 240,000, in the next year, 270,000. He turned 300,000 in one year. But none of that money ever went back into helping me pay for the things that needed to be done for the family. I can’t tell you the absolute despair that I felt when I read those documents. I couldn’t believe that someone would watch me deteriorate like that.

TARANG CHAWLA: Jane says the couple had sent their child to school before he was ready because the couple couldn’t afford another year of preschool.

Except – as we now know – they could. Jane simply didn’t know that they could. And it was their child who suffered as a result.

JANE MATTS: He was struggling at preschool. And they recommended that he not go to school so young, that he’d be held back. And I couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t afford to keep him in daycare. So he went to school, and it was really detrimental to him. So he watched that and I still to this day, I cannot believe that he thought that that was okay.

TARANG CHAWLA: Not letting someone know or have access to the family income is a form of financial abuse. So is pressuring your partner to take on a loan or a debt on your behalf.

TOMAS: Mobile phone contracts, rent bonds. It was just always in my name, which I didn’t really think twice about. But now I know it’s because this person had really bad debt or wouldn’t be able to get the contract if they used their own details.

TARANG CHAWLA: Having to ask your partner for permission to spend small amounts of money is also a form of abuse.

TOMAS: I remember this person would blow tens of thousands of dollars. And I would message this person to say, can I get a muffin with my coffee today? And it’d be like, of course, you can get a muffin.  I had to ask his permission. Because if this person saw the bill there, like $9 on Wednesday, you know, I would then have to clearly explain, because it actually came back to me, that I was overspending.

TARANG CHAWLA: And yes, spending money that you’ve agreed is intended for bills, rent or the mortgage – on something else – can also be a form of abuse.

LULA DEMBELE: The first time your partner gambles the rent money, that’s a red flag. Whether that be gambling, or whether it just be spending their money on stuff they like to do, as opposed to the benefit of the household.

TARANG CHAWLA: That was Lula Dembele, Director of Lived Expertise, Government Relations, and Advocacy at the Illawarra Women’s Trauma Recovery Centre. Lula has been in two significant relationships where financial abuse occurred. In both cases, her partner was earning more than her – but was irresponsible with their money.

LULA DEMBELE: It meant that I was always then having to cover the costs of food, rent, bills, and it limited my ability to enjoy my money. So despite me working full-time you’re essentially paying for the upkeep of two people. And that’s not being reciprocated. 

TARANG CHAWLA: Like Alex Bunton, Lula’s partner also borrowed money from her, promising it would be repaid.

LULA DEMBELE: I remember early on, I’d saved up money for Christmas holidays so that when we’re away, we could have a little bit of spending money and my partner at the time said ‘I will borrow some of that now, I just need some cash now. So I’ll borrow that and I’ll pay you back.’

TARANG CHAWLA: Just before Christmas, Lula asked for the money back.

LULA DEMBELE: And he’s like ‘no, you didn’t lend me the money. That wasn’t how this worked. I didn’t agree that I’d pay you back.’ I was like ‘of course we did. Because I had saved that money for a specific purpose, and I wouldn’t have lent it to you or just given it away. And now we can’t have this time that I had planned, that I worked hard for, that I saved for that I’m now not benefiting from because you’re being selfish or irresponsible. 

TARANG CHAWLA: Lula believes financial abuse is so difficult to define because it may not necessarily be about control. For many abusers it is about control, but for others it isn’t intentional at all.

LULA DEMBELE: I even struggle now to frame what happened in my relationship as financial abuse. I know the impact on me was abusive and destabilising and certainly undermined a lot of my personal wealth. But I don’t hold that the motivation was necessarily deliberate to control me. And so it’s hard to balance out the intent of his actions and the impact on me because the impact’s the same.

TARANG CHAWLA: Lula notes that it’s the impact – not the intention – that matters, when determining if abusive behaviour has occurred.

LULA DEMBELE: Regardless of that intention, regardless of the person that you’re in a relationship with, their mentality around it, if the impact on you is still the same result – that your finances are being undermined, that you’re paying off your partner’s debt, that you’re losing your assets. That’s financial abuse…

It is fundamentally destabilising your welfare. And that shouldn’t happen in a loving caring relationship.

TARANG CHAWLA: Sian explains that it’s important to tune into the feelings you’re experiencing.

SIAN LEWIS: The emotion underneath is I am not in control. And so if you feel uncomfortable, because you don’t feel you’re in control, then that’s the first inkling that something might be going wrong. And everybody will have different levels of comfort. 

TARANG CHAWLA: Financial abuse can have a serious, long term impact on someone’s financial wellbeing.

Imagine being left responsible for joint loans, or being coerced into developing a poor credit history. Imagine the prospect of long-term financial hardship and even homelessness. Alex was eventually left with nothing at all.

ALEX BUNTON: It was my birthday. I woke up. And he drained my bank account. And he wasn’t with me at the time. I went home. And I just woke up that morning and thought this is the moment that I need to call the police and not even second guess it.

TARANG CHAWLA: Tomas always wanted to be a dad. And, with the help of a surrogate, he became one. Tomas left when he realised the financial abuse perpetrated by his former partner was endangering his children. 

TOMAS: At that point I couldn’t afford the childcare for that week. I had no money for food for them, I inevitably had to call my family and ask, can I borrow $100 or something, which was so embarrassing to me. I’ve never asked my parents for any money. But I had to feed my kids. And this was a real, real warning for me that, okay, my kids are actually going to be in danger if I stay in this situation.

TARANG CHAWLA: If you’re concerned about your own relationship, and feel like financial abuse might be happening to you, pay careful attention to the facts – but also how you feel.

If you’re feeling trapped, alone and helpless – without access to the funds, you might need to leave. If you feel like you have no autonomy or just a gut feeling that something isn’t right. If you feel like you’re walking on eggshells or are scared to ever bring up the subject of money – then financial abuse may be at play. If you are experiencing feelings of shame and humiliation, these are also signs… these may also be red flags according to 1800 Respect.

SIAN LEWIS: The more that we can make people understand what financial abuse looks like, the easier it is for people to recognise and to get help.

TARANG CHAWLA: If you notice you’re made to feel “stupid” or incompetent and so you doubt your own financial knowledge, that’s a warning sign. If your partner keeps all loans, mortgages, credit cards and accounts in their name, making you feel powerless and trapped, this is another warning sign. And if there are no discussions about finance, or decisions are made without your input, 1800 RESPECT says these could be signs that it’s not a healthy financial relationship.

LULA DEMBELE: How money is shared, or how money is used, is really important to look at in your relationship. Being irresponsible with fundamentals, like not paying for the food, shopping, not paying for the rent, not paying for things when they’ve committed to pay for things is really critical. They might seem like small things but they’re really big things.

TARANG CHAWLA: Lula says: watch out for language where a partner denies, dismisses or minimises your needs and reality. For example, denying they need to pay you back.

LULA DEMBELE: That element of gaslighting of “that’s not what we agreed” and it’s like, “that sure is what we agreed”.

TARANG CHAWLA: Sian Lewis says we all need to understand our finances and not be afraid of managing them ourselves.

SIAN LEWIS: You have to learn to manage your finances in the same way as we learn to manage anything else. At its heart, it’s very simple. It’s kind of what’s incoming, what’s outgoing. What do I want to achieve with the money that I’ve got?

TARANG CHAWLA: As your finances become more complicated, there are experts and resources you can lean on, outside of a romantic partnership.

SIAN LEWIS: That’s where your bank, certainly Commonwealth Bank can help you. You can go into a branch and talk about the best way to manage your finances as well. But there’s lots of information available for you to get more comfortable with how you manage your finances.

TARANG CHAWLA: You can also lean on these resources if you are being financially abused, or are recovering from abuse, no matter who you bank with.

SIAN LEWIS: In the Australian community, we established a partnership with Good Shepherd, which is the Next Chapter of financial independence hub. And that’s available to anybody across Australia, you don’t have to be a customer with the Commonwealth Bank, to reach out to the financial independence hub, and to support people in their recovery journey.

TARANG CHAWLA: It made all the difference for Lula. After hearing about CommBank’s Next Chapter program in season one of this podcast, she decided to reach out and inquire about their resources.

LULA DEMBELE: I just thought, I wonder what they are given my own experiences and where I was financially… I was like, I could really do with some help.

TARANG CHAWLA: Through the Next Chapter program, Lula was given support, education, and a loan. She even eventually bought her own home.

LULA DEMBELE: I’ve gone from nothing and feeling like I don’t know anything, to getting, you know, back into the property market.

TARANG CHAWLA: Lula says she now feels empowered to deal with money, and is actively working towards a retirement plan.

LULA DEMBELE: It’s just given me the space to know that it’s okay to back myself, to invest in myself. And that wealth creation is not a dirty word. And that just because I’m a single mum doesn’t mean I’m out of reach to access services that I would have previously only thought rich people can use. 

TARANG CHAWLA:  A person’s decision to perpetrate financial abuse against someone else is never the victim’s fault. But there are some strategies that can indicate, early on, whether someone respects another person’s right to be financially secure. 

How do they respond when asked for an open dialogue about your finances? Are they comfortable checking in regularly? 

SIAN LEWIS: Set up some regular time to talk about ‘where are we at? Do we still want to be spending money on the same things? What does the bank account look like? What have we been spending?’ Just so that both members of the relationship are fully across what’s happening in their financial lives in the same way as they’re fully across what’s happening in their social or emotional lives.

It’s often very hard, you know, finances are not people’s most exciting subject to talk about on a romantic evening.

TOMAS: I think being aware that these are real signs and symptoms at the start of a relationship and to be honest, getting out if you can is so important, because someone who’s going to financially abuse you, even if they’re lovely in every other aspect. It is not worth it. It’s not worth it.

LULA DEMBELE: I think some fundamentals around finances is it’s, can you can you afford, literally afford like this good with this bad? 

TARANG CHAWLA: Next week on There’s No Place Like Home we will explore blame shifting.

BRIAN SULLIVAN: Men will criticise and blame their partners, for not being a good lover, a good partner, a good person.

TARANG: See you then.

OUTRO:There’s No Place Like Home is a Future Women podcast in collaboration with our proud partner, Commonwealth Bank, who are committed to helping end financial abuse through CommBank Next Chapter.

No matter who you bank with, if you are worried about your finances because of domestic and family violence, you can contact CommBank’s Next Chapter Team. 

Contact the team on 1800 222 387, within Australia or visit commbank.com.au/nextchapter. If you need help or advice, please check the shownotes for phone numbers for confidential support.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate and review. It will help these important stories to reach more people’s ears. For more information about There’s No Place Like Home, or to join the movement, please head to futurewomen.com.

This episode was produced by Jamila Rizvi, Emily Brooks, Mel Fulton, Sally Spicer, Hannah Fahour and Tarang Chawla. Editing by Bad Producer Productions. Artwork by Patti Andrews.