Debt as a Control Tactic in Marriage

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

"Coerced debt" is an important but understudied form of intimate partner violence (IPV). It occurs when abusers in intimate relationships use fraud or coercion to generate debt in their partners' names. For example, abusers may fraudulently incur car loans in their partners' names or force them to make credit card purchases. Preliminary evidence suggests that coerced debt is a common problem with damaging effects on the lives of women with abusive partners. It 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. These debts and barriers may be associated with long-term economic harm in large part because victims of coerced debt have difficulty attaining effective help from the two relevant legal systems: divorce law and debtor-creditor law. Despite these potential impacts of coerced debt, the research remains in its infancy. This project will be the first in-depth study of coerced debt. It will address fundamental questions about how coerced debt operates in abusive relationships, how victims seek and attain legal help for coerced debt, and coerced debt's effects on women's recovery from an abusive relationship. This study will use a sequential mixed-method longitudinal design to collect data from a sample of women recently divorced from an abusive partner. The researchers will use public divorce records to recruit a sample of 180 women in Michigan and Texas (120 women with coerced debt and a comparison group of 60 without). The researchers will collect quantitative data through in-person interviews with the full sample. They will identify instances of coerced debt with an assessment tool used in conjunction with participants' credit reports as well as a tested methodology (life history calendar) to aid in the recall of focal experiences. The quantitative data will be used to investigate: 1) the types and amounts of coerced debt incurred in victims' names, tactics abuser use to incur it, and how victims learn of fraud; 2) differences between abusive relationships with and without coerced debt; 3) the extent to which help for coerced debt is available, accessible, and acceptable through divorce and debtor-creditor law; and 4) the extent of coerced debt's economic effects in the three months after an abusive relationship ends. Additionally, the researchers will conduct in-depth follow-up qualitative interviews with a subsample of up to 40 victims of coerced debt. The qualitative data will be used to gain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of how victims of coerced debt experience it in the broader context of abuse, facilitators of and barriers to attaining help through the divorce system, and the process by which coerced debt shapes victims' lives. In addition to publishing scholarship, the researchers will disseminate the findings to policy makers, service providers, and attorneys with the goal of ensuring that interventions to address coerced debt are evidence-based. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.