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8 hours ago
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Joanna Thomas* was working for a UK government department when she received a bonus. Her earnings, as had been the case since she got married in her early 20s, went into her only bank account: a joint one shared with her now ex-husband.
The cash landed in the account in the morning. By the afternoon, her then-husband messaged to let her know he had withdrawn it all to buy a boat on eBay.
Thomas, who is in her 40s and lives in south-west England, says she was working harder and harder to keep on top of spiralling debts that he was accumulating in their joint names.
This was one of years of examples of financially reckless and controlling behaviour, alongside emotional and psychological abuse, that crept up on Thomas. “I was just 18 when I met him. He was ambitious, bright, hard-working, though he has always had a bit of a temper.
“I had just moved to university. My only reference point was my mum and dad’s relationship. They always had joint accounts, and my dad was always very much in charge of money. I thought that was what you did.
“I got engaged early into the relationship and then fell pregnant soon after.”
Money got tight when her now ex-husband quit his job to set up a business and mortgaged their home with a 120% loan to fund the training.
“He began to accrue debts associated with the business, including taking out credit in my name, too, to help keep things afloat.
“He was starting projects that couldn’t be finished. I came home one week and he had taken down the ceiling and walls in the living room and dining room. There was absolutely no way of funding putting plaster back on the walls and putting it right. He wouldn’t renew the MOT on the car, he wouldn’t pay road tax, he would go and park somewhere, not pay for parking and get a fine. He would make crazy decisions, and I would clean up.”
It took more than 11 years after the relationship ended for her to finally escape the impact of a ruined credit file. She estimates that she paid out at least £130,000.
Thomas’s experience is far from unusual, according to the debt charity StepChange. An estimated 1.6 million people were coerced into debt in the past year alone, according to a new report by the charity.
Coerced debt is considered a form of economic abuse in which the perpetrator uses controlling or threatening behaviour to force a partner, family member or friend into owing money. They might put mortgages or bills in the victim’s name; convince them to buy things on a credit card or take out a loan; or take their wages or steal their money, leaving them with no choice but to borrow to live.
Relatively few people are aware of this type of abuse, however, and as a result StepChange believes not enough is done to prevent it, or support those who are paying the price.
Thomas is part of a “large minority” – about 12% – of StepChange clients seeking help for coerced debts. But the charity’s wider survey of the public suggests nearly 60% of those who have experienced coerced debt in the last year deal with it alone.
“We found that victim-survivors often didn’t disclose what they’d been through,” says Genevieve Richardson, senior public policy advocate at StepChange and author of the report.
“This was often related to safety, but it was also related to the fact that they didn’t even realise that they’d been through coerced debt, or that there was anything that they could do about it.”
A small fraction – less than a fifth – of the charity’s clients who had debts as a result of coercion had any of them written off. Even then, their credit scores often remained poor for years.
When Thomas eventually ended her marriage, she says she was forced to leave her ex-husband in the family home with her children while she slept on sofas, as she had no financial independence or money of her own.
He stopped paying the mortgage but refused to sell, or remove his name from the loan, which left Thomas trapped in the joint commitment. He also refused to sign divorce papers. “I explained the situation but the mortgage company said there was nothing they could do.”
She felt she had no choice but to put all of the debts that carried a joint liability into her own name so she could be free of him.
Another woman, Anita, accrued a debt of £52,000 in her name, run up by her abuser who used joint savings without her consent. They were left owing money to her child’s private school. She sustained a brain injury as a result of the abuse when her former husband tried to kill her. The school still pursued legal action for the fees, and it was Anita who received a county court judgment (CCJ).
A CCJ, or a default on a loan, mortgage or credit card, negatively affects your credit history for at least six years and affects everything from the ability to take out a mobile phone contract to being able to rent a property or, in some cases, apply for jobs.
Years after she left her relationship, Thomas was offered a promising new position at a company, but as part of the application process she was told she would undergo a credit check.
“My heart sank – I had to admit to this stranger, who was going to become my boss, what a financial mess my life had been.”
Richardson believes there needs to be an agreed approach to all aspects of economic abuse and coerced debt – from spotting it to making sure victims are not re-traumatised by their dealings with creditors, and reinstating economic justice in the form of, for example, wiping debts and restoring credit histories.
“Even in cases where clients did tell debt advisers or banks what they had been through, there was inconsistency in the responses,” she says. “We saw some people getting really great results. One client had £30,000 of her debts written off, but others were turned away. A lot of people are slipping through the cracks.”
StepChange, alongside UK Finance, the banking trade body, and the charity Surviving Economic Abuse, is calling on ministers to convene a cross-government taskforce led by the Treasury and the Home Office. It believes the Financial Conduct Authority should create an industry-wide approach to coerced debt to make sure all banks and creditors prevent foreseeable harm arising from economic abuse.
One helpful move could be to introduce a “tell us once” service, similar to what is on offer for those dealing with a deceased person’s affairs. Many victims find themselves repeating their stories of abuse over and over.
There has already been a successful pilot of an “economic abuse evidence form”, devised by the charities Money Advice Plus and Surviving Economic Abuse, which allows those in financial difficulty to record the history of their experience, and provide evidence, just once. More than 25 banks and building societies signed up to accept it. StepChange would like to see it rolled out to other creditors, such as utility providers and local authorities.
Meanwhile, credit reference agencies say they are doing more work to help support those who have been subjected to economic abuse.
“Collaboration across the industry is essential,” says Sue Owen-Bailey, social innovation and sustainability manager at Equifax UK. “If someone has been a victim of economic abuse, and credit has been taken out in their name without consent, we can help query these applications with lenders.”
John Webb, a consumer expert at another leading agency, Experian, says: “We can raise disputes with relevant companies, saving time and distress. We also help people add passwords to their credit reports for extra security, break financial links with others, and add notes to accounts to explain they were the result of abuse.”
* Name has been changed
