What are the warning signs of financial abuse?

Financial abuse is a common and often hidden type of abuse within family and domestic violence, characterized by behaviors that control, restrict, or hide money and financial information, frequently involving a person's bank accounts, credit cards, tax filings, and business reporting systems. Financial abuse is a very particular subset of economic abuse. It's an effective form of coercive control that restricts a person's financial autonomy, decision-making capacity, and access to their own funds, and it's estimated to cost the economy nearly $11 billion a year and affects more than 2.4 million Australians.