Listen Here:  https://judyweigle.podbean.com/e/tips-to-identify-and-handle-financial-abuse-in-your-marriage-wattorney-lisa-zeiderman/

1. You may not have been able to define it until  you listened to episode 225 on Financial Abuse, but you know when you’re not living as a person who is free to use family money, spend family money, and discuss family money with your spouse. Marriage only works if both people have access to family money without recrimination, as long as both people are responsible with money.
2. There still are religions and cultures that do not allow women to have access to family money. These cultures and religions will generally live in the same geographic communities in order to control the behavior of the members of those cultures and religions. This makes leaving those marriages in which financial control is part of the philosophy of the members is almost impossible unless the victim is willing to leave the geographic community.
3. Outside of specific cultures and religions, the ability to access family money, the freedom to purchase items for the family and for personal use is a normal function of being an adult. Controlling one spouse’s access to money is abusive, which is a method of control, an unnatural control that is an outgrowth of the controller’s emotional health. This abusive, controlling behavior is not healthy behavior.
4. Emotional Abuse and Financial Abuse go together. You don’t have one without the other. It typically starts with financial abuse and then escalates to emotional abuse because the spouse who is limited in their access to money will become angry, frustrated, and unhappy in the relationship if they want to be in control of money, too. But when the perpetrator of financial abuse feels that they are losing control over their spouse who wants to change the financial relationship previously established, the perpetrator will display anger in a more verbal way, becoming emotionally abusive, and eventually physically abusive. In these cultures and religions, male dominance is the norm.  Although women have accepted male dominance as part of their acceptance of their culture and religion, there are women who muster the courage to either divorce their husbands in order to live freely and in control of their financial lives, or ask that their husbands allow them access to money without fear.
5. Physical Abuse will always follow emotional abuse. It has to. When emotional abuse continues to be displayed, the emotions grow stronger with each incident until the emotions need somewhere else to go, and they go to hitting, or worse. This is the way abusers function; the abuse escalates to physical harm.
6. Each victim of financial abuse has to decide, at some point, what their tolerance level is. If the freedom to use money isn’t important, then that person will continue in the relationship. But if the victim decides at any point that she/he wants to live differently, more independently within a marriage, then changing the relationship or leaving the relationship are the two choices.

Money is important to our existence. It’s how we provide the basic necessities of living, and we feel good when we control our use of money properly, beneficially to the family. Making sound financial decisions, and having the opportunity to exercise ideas on growing money, spending money, and making money is essential to feeling in control of our lives.

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