SINGAPORE - When Ms Bayu, 40, relocated from Indonesia to Singapore after getting married to her Singaporean beau in 2005, she expected to live out the rest of her days happy and in love.

Instead, she felt helpless and cut off from the outside world, once her then husband revealed his true colours.

He restricted her financial access, told her how to dress, and discouraged her from going out.

Whenever she asked to use his phone to call her family, he would ask: “What for?”

She told The Straits Times: “At the beginning, because my love for him was so big, it conquered everything else. I thought he wanted the best for me. I thought he was telling me those things for my own good.”

As she did not work and her then spouse controlled their finances, she felt powerless. “I didn’t have friends I could talk to, he was the only one close to me. So I felt that I needed to listen to what he said, since I was his wife,” she said.

Minister of State for Social and Family Development Sun Xueling said in Parliament on Tuesday that the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) had considered whether to include financial abuse in the definition of family violence.

She said that financial abuse is a complex issue and subject to different interpretations, and the ministry is working to further study this.

The Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO) surveyed 50 women from among its past and present beneficiaries between 2019 and 2023, and found that half of them experienced financial abuse in their marriages.

In financial abuse cases, perpetrators assert power and control over their victims by restricting their access to finances, and their ability to acquire economic resources. This makes it hard for them to be financially self-sufficient. 

SCWO deputy chief executive Lorraine Lim told ST that financial abuse is a form of emotional and psychological violence that may start off subtly, and increase in intensity over time.

Some common methods that abusers use to gain financial control over their partners include running up large amounts of debt on joint accounts, manipulating the divorce process by hiding or not disclosing assets, denying the victim access to bank accounts, and withholding or controlling money and assets.

Ms Lim said: “It can even look like love at first, such as offering to take care of bills, ‘helping’ to look over bank statements, and so on.

“Even though physical abuse may never occur throughout the entire relationship, financial abuse is still a marker of an unhealthy and abusive relationship.”

As the relationship continues, the signs may become clearer. They may even prompt the women to finally reach out for help.

However, about a quarter of respondents felt that they did not have anyone they could reach out to for support. Thus, they may feel that they cannot leave the relationship just yet, said Ms Lim.

More than half also said that one of the main deciding factors for leaving was the well-being of their children, and some chose to stay due to the close relationships their children had with their fathers.  

The report found that a higher literacy level of the women in comparison with their husbands may contribute to the men using abuse to exhibit a more dominant position in the relationship.

Ms Lim said that men may attempt to exhibit dominance over their female spouses in order to regain power within the household, as they view their spouses’ higher literacy level as a threat.

She said: “Stereotypically, within a patriarchal society, men are the breadwinners of the family and pride themselves on being so.

“However, when this ‘norm’ is deviated – since a higher literacy level often corresponds directly to higher wages – men may resort to domestic and emotional violence to cause disruption and regain some of the dominance they perceive as having lost, by virtue of earning less than their spouses.”

It is a common misconception that one can apply for maintenance only upon divorce, said Ms Lim.

In Singapore, wives, children and incapacitated husbands can apply for maintenance while still in a marriage, and/or upon divorce.

From the cases seen by Maintenance Support Central – SCWO’s drop-in centre that provides spousal and/or child maintenance support – close to half are not divorced but are in conflictual or unhappy marriages, with their spouses shirking their responsibilities and not providing for their families.

The survey also found that almost half of respondents experienced physical harm from their partners in addition in financial abuse.

For Ms Bayu, she fell to the bottom of a flight of stairs after her then husband pushed her during an argument.

Seeing her then seven-year-old son witness this in fear was the moment she realised things needed to change.

She sought help from SCWO to file a maintenance order, and eventually got a divorce in 2019. She got back on her feet and took up a job to stay financially self-sufficient.

She said: “Knowing that my children and I are safe after going through this situation, we are much happier now.”