Banks - safe spaces for the abused ?

 

June 2022

I went to Elstree a couple of weeks ago: right outside the station there was a poster:

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In my youth I banked with Barclays; in 1988 they closed a savings account of mine - which held a modest sum, perhaps £10 - without telling me, because I had not used it for a long time. 

I wasn't happy with this, so moved my account to Midland Bank and was with them, and HSBC, for a further thirty years or so, before going back to Barclays. The reason for leaving HSBC at that time is more complex than that for leaving Barclays in the 80s. I shall explain.

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It was a coincidence, but in 1988 I also met my future wife. From the outset I realised she had some problems with financial management, but the ‘optimism bias’ in me kicked in and we married in 1990. Within months we started to have financial ‘hiccups’ - there would be less money to last out the month than I had expected, I would have to raid the savings account for some ‘one-off’ bill or expense. I found myself unable to pursue my hobbies; I couldn’t afford studio time for my musical interests, I ended up having to sell my own recording kit (for a pittance), and had to grasp every opportunity for overtime at work that was going. 

Thinking it would give us better control of our finances, I made what I later realised was a big mistake, suggesting we should have a joint bank account. Even though we discussed how important it would be for us to make a budget and stick to it, I didn’t realise that by agreeing to a joint account I would effectively be saying to the bank that, no matter how much my wife overspent, I would be happy to foot the bill.

Our son arrived in 1991; my wife had less opportunity to work, and required childcare for the periods both she and I would be working. It may have been thirty years ago but I recall sometimes the costs were two hundred pounds a week - at a time when my take-home pay was probably no more than two thousand pounds a month (and of course we had a mortgage to pay, and to eat…). My wife's income was less than a few hundred pounds a month perhaps, barely covering the childcare costs. Financially, we survived, but only by me doing extra work and cutting back on holidays; meanwhile, my wife was taking the tube to Harrods,  meeting up with her friends to go shopping at Lakeside, or in the West End. Every month I checked the bank statement and found cheques going through for clothes, beauty products and luxuries that we simply couldn’t afford; even if we agreed that we’d spend only on essentials one month she would still be tempted by an offer somewhere, or insist that she simply had to have a new dress for the autumn, and I would have to find the three figure sum for it from somewhere.

By the time my son was in his teens we had long exhausted our savings, and were regular users of an overdraft facility; in fact, we spent most of the month bouncing off our limit. I took out loans and credit cards - most with HSBC - to keep our heads above water, but knew things couldn’t continue the way they had been going. I was unable to do many of the things other men could - I couldn’t afford to go out to the pub at lunchtime, for instance - and trips to see my family were few and far between; we'd moved to Yorkshire - something I had been uneasy about, miles from my roots or family, and I felt horribly alone.

My life consisted of going out to work, working, and domestic life with my wife; I had no independent life. I had little, if any, choice in how the money I earned was spent. It may sound a preposterous statement, but, trapped in the confines of such a relationship I was, on more than one occasion, inclined to compare my life to that of a slave. Certainly, some slaves in Roman times had a way out, and that, I realised, was what I lacked; suicide did cross my mind as one option, but the thought of the effect that would have on my family ruled it out.

It was when a life insurance policy, bought in 1983 to cover a mortgage, matured in 2008 and didn’t even cover all of our credit card debt (let alone our loans and mortgage) that I decided something had to change. I called time on our relationship, walking out in 2009. It took some planning and arranging, believe it or not you need to have a few quid available to be able to move out of a family home. Our family home was sold and the proceeds paid off the various loans and debts, I was able to start again. I moved back to Barclays while the divorce as being sorted because my wife was very friendly with the local HSBC staff and I didn’t want there to be any risk of my financial affairs being leaked to her, or even for her to put them under pressure to do this.

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It was only after I had left her that I realised that the relationship between my wife and I had been one involving economic abuse. My now ex-wife had, for years, been emptying the bank account, spending our money on things she wanted, leaving me to sort things out. On more than one occasion we had gone to the bank to ask about a loan, and I had so wanted them to look at our finances and ask how on earth we managed to live on what we had left after mortgage, loan repayments, and bills - but they never did. (This was in the days when bank staff made hefty commissions from selling loans, even to people who couldn’t afford them; I think they are more careful now.)

I realised there had been a number of warning signs that our relationship was, at the very least, financially difficult. The bank should have spotted:

• We had very little to fall back on; at one point we had a £120,000 mortgage debt, another £130,000 in personal loans and credit card balances, and no more than £200 in savings;

• Our current account balance bounced off the overdraft limit throughout every month;

• We went to the bank and asked for loans on more than one occasion;

• If we had been honest - and the bank did proper assessments of our finances - we should never have been considered suitable for all the loans they sold us.

As things became strained my wife and I had horrible rows, and she did become violent. 

To start sorting things out I had, at one point, opened up a personal account in just my name with HSBC, for business expenses - because I couldn’t risk her raiding that pot of perhaps £500 that I would need to pay off the next company Amex bill. I recall the chap from HSBC I spoke to on the phone asking me why I needed a personal account as well as a joint one, and I remember saying that I had to keep some money in an account my wife could not access. That was the first time I realised the position I had been in; even at the time I wished he had asked more, or suggested I seek help.  

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I soon realised how my mental health, and my wellbeing, had been affected by what had been nearly twenty years of restrictions due to the very tight financial constraints I had been subject to. If my wife had wanted something, she would just go out and buy it, taking out a store card if necessary, and then tell me that I was not a proper husband if I complained. When I'd tried to discuss our financial problems she would say that they were my fault; I should have been earning more. 

At the time it happened I did not consider this to be abuse: I thought it was all part and parcel of marriage, ‘with all my worldly goods I thee endow’ and all that. My wife would tell me that we would have to work on our relationship, that my complaints about her spending were unjust; in effect, our financial problems were my fault, and I believed it. I didn’t want to be seen as a failure at marriage, so, for much of those 20 years, I did what I thought ‘trying harder at the relationship’ involved. It didn’t get me anywhere, except even poorer. I’m now older and wiser, but, at the time, my nonconformist upbringing kicked in, I continued to try to make things work, and I kept the fact that we were living beyond our means and I was not happy about it to myself. (I was even told ‘don’t be mean’ after objecting to £20 notes being put in christmas cards for each of six of my wife’s friends’ children, totalling £120, at the time when we were at our overdraft limit, two weeks before pay day, and I couldn’t afford a suit for work; and I did nothing. That is what being abused is like; you are under someone else’s control.) 

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I don’t believe I am alone, or even one of only a small number of, people whose relationships have fallen apart in this way. To this day, I do feel that more might have been done to make me aware of what marriage, and joint financial responsibility, might involve. For instance:

• I really do wish I had been advised to take advice from a solicitor before getting married - even to the point of insisting on a pre-nup agreement. I was the homeowner in the relationship, I had a substantial amount of equity in the house when me married; I got only a little more as a divorce settlement twenty years later. She got a house, unmortgaged, and some of my pension; a far better settlement than she deserved. I might have arranged my affairs differently had I realised what she might get, and how she might exploit a joint account; who knows, I might have thought more about her money habits and called off the wedding. 

• Shared bank accounts should come with a health warning, especially where joint borrowing facilities are involved. The requirement for both to sign should be more commonly used, even in this age of card payments.

• Couples that are borrowing heavily for no apparent reason could be seen separately by their bank if they apply for further loans.

• Banks should be able to spot joint accounts that regularly bounce off their overdraft limit; they should surely be under a duty to chat, confidentially, to both holders of such an account to ask them whether everything is alright. As the poster says, economic abuse occurs in 95% of domestic abuse situations; it may well not be the only form of abuse going on and some form of intervention might prevent something horrible.  

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One patently absurd requirement HSBC had, at the time of our divorce, was that I had to clear the overdraft and obtain my wife’s consent to close the joint account. I wasn’t able to just say I was not prepared to foot the bill for her extravagance any more. I can’t remember how I got her consent, perhaps her solicitor advised her it would not be useful to withhold it. 

I hope HSBC looks more sympathetically on such requests nowadays; the poster suggests it does.  

It's good to see HSBC realises that a bank may spot signs of a bad relationship before anyone else; I’m not sure, though, if a ‘safe space’ is a great deal of use on its own. I’d rather see more honesty in society about how traditional views of marriage can lead to suffering in abusive relationships, and a serious debate about changing the concept of what is, in fact, a legal contract so that you have to opt-in to renew your commitments every few years, and that, if a relationship isn’t working, you might (perhaps if there are no dependent children) just be able to walk away from it, and not be tied down with obligations (legal, moral, or self-imposed) and abuse that all arose with just the two words ‘I do’, years before.

It is also some comfort that, technically at least, financial abuse within marriage can now be considered a criminal offence (coercive or controlling behaviour). I’m not sure that it would be easy to prove, though; many victims would, like me, feel that it is all part and parcel of the so-called ‘joy’ of marriage.

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Before you ask, no, I have not remarried. I'm happily sharing my life with someone, we are together because we want to be, and not because of the shackles that are marriage vows.