According to a Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) research, victims of domestic abuse often face housing and economic instability, mortgage arrears, and poor credit ratings.
They said that sometimes abusers have sold up a combined mortgage, agreed to new conditions, or refused to pay, leaving their victims homeless.
A woman informed the charity that although though she separated from her ex-husband ten years ago, they are still co-mortgaging a home.
He has the authority to use his position to prevent me from repaying the mortgage at any time by withholding child support payments, she added, and I can’t sell the house without his consent.
The study, titled Locked into a Mortgage, Locked out of my Home, cited a poll conducted in the previous two years by Opinium among more than a thousand women with shared mortgages.
According to the study, 78% of women who believed their partner had abused their mortgage were afraid to leave because they might end up in a dangerous situation.
Eight out of ten women, or 12%, reported having suffered abuse in some capacity, and nearly half of them, or 49%, stated they had to make sacrifices in order to pay off their mortgage.
