She can't buy anything without her partner interrogating her. He leaves her out of financial decisions and she suspects he's keeping money secrets. She knows – because he is always telling her so – that she's hopeless with money.
What this woman – and many others in similar situations – doesn't realise is that she's being financially abused. For years, this type of insidious behaviour has been buried under the assumption that women look after the house and kids, men look after the money.
"It's always existed, it was just considered such a normal thing that men are better with money, they have the right to make financial decisions," says Julie Kun, from the Women's Information Referral Exchange (WIRE), a support service in Victoria.
"It was just glossed over as a family dynamic rather than [seen as] financial abuse and control."
Only in recent years has obstructing or denying access to money been recognised as a form of domestic violence, which Good Shepherd Microfinance, an organisation that assists people in financial difficulty, estimates has affected 2 million women in Australia.
A woman can become trapped in a relationship when she doesn't have the independent means to escape – and the abuse doesn't let up. Even if she manages to leave, she can continue to suffer if she's subjected to costly, drawnout legal battles, unfair property settlements, and unpaid child support.
Men can also be victims of financial abuse, but women tend to be more vulnerable as they spend time out of the workforce having children, making them reliant on their partner's income. The abuse often begins during pregnancy or after the birth of a child.
Three women who were financially abused by their partners tell their stories.
SUSIE*
"When I met Michael* I had been financially independent for 13 years. I had a well-paid job as an account manager and a Gold Amex card. He earned really good money working for a big company. Within three months, we were engaged and living together. I paid all the bills and he paid the mortgage. There were no indications that money would ever become an issue; we ate at nice restaurants, we bought an upmarket home in a good suburb.
But when I fell pregnant, I was so ill I had to stop working. Suddenly I had no control over the money because he was paying for everything. We needed to buy things like a pram and a cot and he started to get upset about minor purchases. There were redundancies at his work so I just thought he was being careful with money.
It escalated as the pregnancy went on. He kept telling me I was really bad with money, I couldn't be trusted to make decisions. I believed him because I was so vulnerable, I wasn't able to think rationally.
I had bad postnatal depression after my first child was born. He told me I had to run the household on the government family payment, which was about $250 a week. By the time I bought clothes for the baby and the food, there was nothing left for me.
He was slowly chipping away at my self-confidence. I was convinced the less I had to do with money the better. I think he didn't know how to be any different.
Because he was earning all the money, he decided how it was spent. I got very big with my second child but he wouldn't give me money to buy new maternity clothes. I was buying big, baggy chainstore T-shirts and wearing size-16 tracksuit pants.
I drove a prestige car but he would never give me more than $20 at a time for petrol, so I never had enough fuel to go to see my parents, who lived almost an hour away. He'd ring me to do spot checks: 'Are you at the shops? What are you buying?'
All that affects your self-esteem. I was so unhappy. I felt I couldn't have a conversation with him about money because he would erupt. I was expending so much energy trying to keep the calm in the house that I had nothing left to be assertive.
I started having a glass of wine every night, then two, then three. After six months I realised that if I stayed in this situation I was either going to end up an alcoholic or throw myself off a cliff.
It all came to a head on our 10th wedding anniversary when he didn't want to go for the night away we'd booked. I said, 'I can't do this any more.' He was shellshocked.
When I went to the bank the next morning to get money out, I was told all the accounts had been frozen. I rang a friend, who made me get a lawyer straight away. He held up the property settlement for months.
He said: 'You're crazy having lawyers, they're not looking after you, you're wasting all this money. If you sign some papers you'll get your money in seven days.' There was a property I really wanted to purchase, so I [signed without getting legal advice]. You've married this person, you've said vows to each other in a church, you've had babies together, he's watched you give birth. I trusted him.
When I told my lawyer, he discovered that my ex had had me sign over our $2 million house to him, and had left me as the sole person responsible for the $1.5 million mortgage. We had the asset frozen until my lawyer sorted it out.
I thought that by leaving my husband I would have more control over my life, but he uses the children as a vehicle to continue to exert financial abuse.
He's rearranged all his business affairs to avoid paying child support. He drives a $200,000 car but he won't pay for antibiotics or braces for our children. Twice I've come very close to walking away from my children just to put an end to the conflict. It's been a long hard climb out of a very dark hole.
I say to my kids, 'I don't care what you do when you leave school, but make sure you pick a career you can continue when you have children. I don't want you ever to be in a position where you can't maintain your financial independence'."
LAURA*
"I gave up my career in finance and an overseas promotion to emigrate to Australia from England with my husband. I thought his career was more important than mine. When we got here the phone, the bank account and the lease were all in his name. I didn't even have enough ID to get a Blockbuster Video card. Without him I didn't exist. He had complete control.
The abuse started slowly. He would go out drinking and partying all the time, but he'd say it was the one handbag I bought, or my preference for organic food, which was keeping us broke. He'd say, 'Everybody told me, "Watch her, she likes the high life".'
At work I had been responsible for millions of pounds. I never had to justify my budget decisions to my boss. But at home I was too terrified to even open the electricity bill or the phone bill because he would belittle me in so many ways for not being an efficient homemaker. He'd say, 'Oh, you've got the dryer on again.'
He was slowly chipping away at my self-confidence. I was convinced the less I had to do with money the better. I think he didn't know how to be any different.
He choked me in front of my mother-in-law one time and when I got upset, she said, 'For god's sake, you have to take the rough with the smooth in a marriage.' Violence was so normal in his family. He was more psychologically damaging, though. I tried to leave five times.
After our second child was born, I decided to go back to England. I was waiting to get the baby bonus because it was the only money I would have. I kept calling the bank every hour to see if it had been deposited, and when it was I transferred it to my credit card immediately. I came back because I thought, 'If I end up raising two children on my own, Australia is a much better place to do that.'
He paid for me to go to therapy because he said it would break the hold my mum had over me. He didn't realise it was making me stronger.
It wasn't until a good friend died of cancer that I accepted I had to go to a refuge with my baby and toddler to get away. My friend had been in an abusive relationship for 16 years and she never left him. I thought, 'I can't live like this any more. If this is my last week on Earth, do I want it to be like this?'
When I finally left my husband after 10 years together I had only $33. He'd taken everything. It wasn't until three years later that I realised I had been financially abused. I had been so brainwashed into thinking I was useless. Now I'm running my own consultancy business. I've gone full circle. I thought he'd psychologically broken me, but once I got away from him and was able to think straight, I was able to get back to being me again."
CLAIRE*
"My husband is a very money-driven person. He runs his own business and is a workaholic. Ever since I've known him, he's always dabbled in the poker machines, but it wasn't until I started doing the books for the business that I realised he was putting through $800 at a time.
He asked me to hold onto his ATM card because he didn't trust himself, but then he would just get cash advances on his credit card. He started taking drugs all the time; there was a lot more drinking, a lot less sleeping and a lot of mood swings.
It got worse. A couple of times he put $2500 in the pokies on one night. He told me it was my fault he was gambling because he'd do it after we had a fight. The business was doing well and he started borrowing money from the redraw facility but only paying back half of it. I think he lost the rest gambling.
He'd work 14-hour days and then say he was too tired to spend time with me and the kids. We had this dynamic where he was aggressive and I was passive. I felt powerless to say anything because as soon as I did, he would fire up. I was starting to get very nervous because I saw the money dwindling. I put a freeze on the redraw account but he said, 'You get it undone otherwise we're finished.' I just wanted my family, my husband and everything to be okay, so I did it.
Then he shut me out of everything to do with the business, he changed all the passwords to the bank accounts. I found out he'd sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of shares we owned. I have no idea what he did with that money. I don't think he saw things as ours – they were just his. After 15 years of being together, that kind of pissed me off.
We went to marriage counselling and I said, 'I can't move forward because I don't trust you. You have to give me full access to everything.' He said, 'I'm not giving you anything.' He was clearly hiding something and I realised there was no relationship left. He moved out six months ago and we have equal custody of the kids. We have two investment properties that are linked to our home.
We agreed he would have the two properties and I would take the house. But he's been rejected for all the loans and he's racked up a massive credit card debt. He's using rental income to gamble. He owes money everywhere. Now the tax office is after him. What if he goes bankrupt and drags me down with him? All I want to do is get out of this relationship."
* Names have been changed
WIRE support hotline 1300 134 130
What to do if you are being financially abused
See a counsellor to rebuild your selfesteem and sense of empowerment.
Get legal advice to ensure you receive your fair share of financial assets.
Freeze all joint accounts if you don't need the money immediately and cancel direct debit payments for any of your partner's bills.
Open a new account in your name and ensure all income (salary, Medicare, government benefits etc) is paid into this account.
Change the PINs, passwords and security questions for all accounts: mobile phone, bank, credit card, email and social media.
Get a mailing address that only you can access, such as a PO box.