Published August 16, 2026
Financial coercion in intimate partner relationships extends well beyond the withholding of cash or the monitoring of spending. A growing body of economic abuse research identifies a distinct mechanism, coerced debt, through which an abusive partner generates lasting financial harm by incurring obligations in a partner’s name. This article examines the evidence base, the legal frameworks that have emerged to address economic abuse, and the enduring analytical questions that surround debt as a tool of control.
Defining Coerced Debt
A 2020 study published in Violence Against Women by Adams, Littwin, and Javorka defines coerced debt as “non-consensual, credit-related transactions that occur in intimate relationships where one partner uses coercive control to dominate the other.” The concept, first elaborated by legal scholar Angela Littwin in a 2012 California Law Review article, distinguishes between two principal pathways. One pathway involves fraud, where abusers incur car loans or other obligations in their partners’ names without consent; the other involves coercion, where abusers force partners to make credit card purchases or open accounts against their will.
A 2025 follow-up study by Adams, Littwin, Kennedy, and Beeble in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence describes coerced debt as “an important but understudied form of intimate partner violence” that occurs “when abusive partners use fraud, coercion, or manipulation to incur debt in their partners’ names.” This framing underscores that the concept encompasses a spectrum of conduct, from identity theft to subtler forms of financial pressure.
Prevalence and Impact
The most widely cited quantitative evidence on coerced debt comes from the Adams, Littwin, and Javorka (2020) study, which surveyed women who contacted the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Adams and co-authors analyzed survey data from approximately 2,000 callers and found that 52 percent experienced coerced debt, with abusers’ control over financial information, credit damage, and victims’ financial dependence on abusers also commonly reported.
Additional findings from the same study reveal the breadth of financial harm. Seventy-one percent of respondents stated that their partner had kept information about finances from them, and 46 percent stated that an abusive partner had damaged their credit. Littwin and her colleagues found that an abuser’s control over financial information was predictive of coerced debt and, in turn, coerced debt significantly increased the likelihood of credit damage.
According to Michigan State University’s Research Consortium on Gender-Based Violence, coerced debt “can burden victims with hundreds or thousands of dollars in debt and damage their credit ratings, thus creating barriers to employment, housing, and utility services,” and these barriers may be associated with long-term economic harm because “victims of coerced debt have difficulty attaining effective help from the two relevant legal systems: divorce law and debtor-creditor law.”
Separately, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) published Dreams Deferred in 2018, a survey examining the broader economic impact of intimate partner violence on survivors’ education, careers, and financial security. The survey results point to economic challenges that survivors continue to face, often years after the abuse has ended, indicating that the economic dimensions of abuse “reverberate throughout survivors’ lives, creating a web of complications that can make it difficult to move forward.” Many respondents indicated that economic supports such as credit repair services and debt remediation, cash assistance, and financial counseling can make the difference between remaining with an abusive partner and establishing independence.
Why This Matters
The evidence on coerced debt demonstrates that financial coercion in intimate partner relationships operates as more than a secondary consequence of physical violence. Researchers have found that diverse forms of economic abuse occur within intimate partner relationships with serious consequences for long-term physical and economic safety, and that the role of debt as a means of exercising coercive control has been “often overlooked.” Adams and Littwin’s 2020 study found that, while almost two-thirds of all participants reported staying longer in an abusive relationship because of financial concerns, coerced debt significantly predicted the likelihood of survivors’ financial dependence on abusers. This finding illustrates how debt functions not merely as a byproduct of abuse but as a mechanism that sustains it.
Scholars have only recently started paying attention to the ways in which debt is weaponized by abusers to maintain control over intimate partners, including long after physical separation, and of the 113 countries that currently recognize economic abuse in legislation, very few have developed laws or policies relating specifically to debt accumulated through coercion or force. If a message about money or debt feels controlling, check it for coercive control tactics.
Legal Frameworks
Federal law in the United States now includes a statutory definition of economic abuse. Under 34 U.S.C. section 12291(a)(13), as reauthorized by the Violence Against Women Act, “economic abuse” means behavior that is “coercive, deceptive, or unreasonably controls or restrains a person’s ability to acquire, use, or maintain economic resources,” including the use of “coercion, fraud, or manipulation” to restrict access to money, assets, or credit.
At the state level, approaches vary. Hawaii’s coercive control law specifies a wide range of behaviors including economic abuse, monitoring, isolation, and threats of harm. In 2020, California enacted Senate Bill 1141, one of the country’s first laws explicitly allowing courts to consider coercive control as domestic violence in family court matters. According to a 2026 article in the American Bar Association’s Family Law Quarterly, some states include coercive control or economic abuse in their domestic violence definitions, and New York recently enacted legislation to address coerced debt specifically.
In England and Wales, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 created a statutory category for economic abuse. Under the Act, behavior is “abusive” if it consists of, among other things, controlling or coercive behavior or economic abuse, with economic abuse defined as “any behaviour that has a substantial adverse effect on B’s ability to acquire, use or maintain money or other property, or obtain goods or services.” The Act does not make economic abuse a crime in its own right; however, it requires police and other statutory agencies to be aware of economic abuse, increasing the likelihood that it will be considered under the existing controlling or coercive behavior offence established by the Serious Crime Act 2015.
The UK Government’s Economic Abuse Toolkit identifies that “forcing or coercing someone into debt is a common form of economic abuse” and labels this behavior coerced debt. Despite this recognition, in the United Kingdom, economic abuse was recently included in the statutory definition of domestic abuse, but there has been no attempt by the government to provide victim-survivors with a clear legal remedy for coerced debt.
Enduring Research Questions
Several analytical questions persist across jurisdictions. First, the gap between statutory recognition and practical enforcement remains substantial. As a 2026 American Bar Association analysis notes, while economic abuse is “well-documented in social science research and well-known to advocates, its treatment on a systemic basis in the civil courts where many survivors turn for help is less studied.”
Second, the role of financial institutions in both facilitating and preventing coerced debt has drawn scholarly attention. Research published in the British Journal of Criminology in 2025 drawing on UK data demonstrates that banks “not only create and intensify conditions of vulnerability” for women victim-survivors of coerced debt, but are also “uniquely positioned to safeguard them from economic harm.”
Third, measurement remains a challenge. A 2024 study by Adams and colleagues in Violence Against Women found increased use of economic exploitation when victims were financially advantaged in terms of assets or credit and when perpetrators were disadvantaged, suggesting that economic abuse research must account for the financial profiles of both parties rather than treating abuse as uniform across income levels.
Further Resources
Readers seeking additional information on coerced debt and economic abuse may consult the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233), the Center for Survivor Agency and Justice (csaj.org), and, in the United Kingdom, Surviving Economic Abuse (survivingeconomicabuse.org). These organizations provide direct support and educational resources grounded in the research described above.
Sources
- Adams, Littwin, and Javorka, “The Frequency, Nature, and Effects of Coerced Debt,” Violence Against Women (2020), PubMed
- Michigan State University Research Consortium on Gender-Based Violence, Coerced Debt Study
- Hess and Del Rosario, “Dreams Deferred,” Institute for Women’s Policy Research (2018)
- 34 U.S.C. section 12291, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
- Domestic Abuse Act 2021, legislation.gov.uk
- UK Government Economic Abuse Toolkit, GOV.UK (2025)
- Surviving Economic Abuse, “Economic Abuse and the Domestic Abuse Act”
Disclaimer
Coercive control law moves fast. Jurisdictions are actively criminalizing it, amending definitions, and changing the scope of litigation. This article is current as of its date of publication and may not reflect subsequent changes. It is provided for general educational purposes and is not legal advice.