How financial abuse affects children

0 Comments

Share on:

This interview is with a female who is a victim of financial abuse. Her name has been withheld to respect her safety and privacy.

“My Dad has been mentally, emotionally, and financially abusive to my Mom for their entire marriage (almost 30 years) but my Mom never left him because of the societal pressure from the local South Asian community.”

“When I was eight, he convinced my Mom to quit her job as a doctor saying that she is never around to raise her children. Two weeks later, he bought a house and put the mortgage in her name. This was over 13 years ago and she has only been able to pay off half the mortgage since then.”

I found out that my Dad cut me off from my own chequing account.

“I told my parents that I was dating a guy who wasn’t from my same religion or ethnicity. The next day, my college sent me an email saying I hadn’t paid my tuition…later that week when I tried to buy groceries, my card was declined. I found out that my dad cut me off from my own chequing account. It was a ‘college chequing account’ meaning that a parent also had access to my account and that’s how he was able to cut me off.”

“When I tried applying for [Federal Student Aid], I was unable to fill out the form because my Dad refused to send me his tax returns. This has been a massive barrier in me trying to find additional funding through my college since I needed to have [Federal student aid] on file to qualify for any emergency funding.”

I haven’t spoken to my Dad in two years.

“My university was able to help me with some emergency funding but other than that I was on my own. University financial institutions are not equipped to handle cases of parents cutting off their kids since their ideal audience are students who have healthy relationships with their parents. I haven’t spoken to my Dad in two years but I’ve been able to build my own business, work 2 jobs while taking classes full time. One thing I did that helped me a lot, was to create a separate bank account at another bank and have all my pay cheques to be sent to that specific account.”