Empowering Women — Combatting Economic Abuse
An interview with Amy Barasch
When people picture domestic abuse, they picture bruises. But for many survivors the tightest grip is financial: a partner who controls every account, takes the paycheck, runs up debt in her name, or holds her immigration status over her. Leaving means finding a way to pay rent, feed the kids, and rebuild credit, often while the abuser fights every step in court.
In this TalksOnLaw interview, recorded in 2021, Joel Cohen speaks with Amy Barasch, then Executive Director of Her Justice, a New York City nonprofit that recruits, trains, and mentors volunteer lawyers to give free civil legal help to women living in poverty in family, matrimonial, and immigration matters. She is now an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.
Abuse as Power and Control
Barasch explains that intimate partner violence, a subset of domestic violence, is best understood as a pattern of power and control rather than a series of physical incidents. She recalls a client whose husband, a police lieutenant, once held his loaded service weapon to her head: a single threat that kept her in fear for years. Economic abuse works the same way. Abusers keep partners out of the workforce, sabotage their jobs, control or empty joint accounts, and even intercept money meant for the household, as some clients' partners did with federal relief payments.
Credit and Coerced Debt
Barasch walks through how marriage and shared finances leave survivors exposed. Undocumented clients often have no credit history and must build one from scratch, for example with a store card paid off every month. Others discover that a partner ran up debt in their name, on their cards or accounts, sometimes with a one-time permission stretched into ongoing use. Filing for divorce can matter here, because it marks the date after which a survivor stops being responsible for marital debts that should not be hers, but persuading a court that charges were made without consent is hard.
Child Support and Hidden Income
Withholding child support is another lever of control. Barasch describes cases in which an abuser reported a very low income while running an unreported side business, and explains how Her Justice's pro bono model brings in law-firm volunteers and forensic accountants to trace the money and win a fair award. She also argues for reform: in New York, many child support cases are adjourned again and again for missing paperwork while the custodial parent receives nothing, and straightforward W-2 cases could be moved out of court to an administrative process so judges can focus on the complicated ones.
Immigration Status as Leverage
For immigrant clients, an abusive spouse who controls a pending petition holds enormous power: "I will get you status, but only if you stay with me." Barasch explains the Violence Against Women Act's immigration remedies, including U visas for crime victims and battered spouse waivers, and why work authorization is the key to independence, illustrated by a client whose eventual work permit was "like the golden ticket." She closes with a case in which a father refused to return a child after a visit early in the pandemic, and volunteer lawyers persuaded a judge to treat the case as an emergency and reunite mother and child.
What to Know Now
Congress reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act in March 2022, funding its programs through 2027 and, for the first time, defining "economic abuse" and including economic and technological abuse in the federal definition of domestic violence. The Safe Connections Act of 2022 now lets survivors separate their phone lines from an abuser's shared family plan; the FCC's rules took effect in July 2024.
Coerced debt laws have spread. Nine states, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Texas, and Vermont, now give survivors a way to challenge debts an abuser incurred in their name through coercion or fraud. New York's law, signed in December 2025 and effective in March 2026, requires creditors to stop collecting once a survivor provides a sworn statement and supporting documentation, lets survivors sue or raise coerced debt as a defense, and authorizes Attorney General penalties. At the federal level, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened a rulemaking in December 2024 on treating coerced debt like identity theft under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but it has not advanced past the preliminary stage.
On the immigration side, U visas remain capped at 10,000 a year. Since June 2021, USCIS has granted work authorization and deferred action to petitioners whose pending U visa petitions it finds bona fide, rather than making them wait years for a decision. Enforcement policy has shifted sharply since 2025: in January 2025 ICE rescinded earlier guidance that had protected victims with pending VAWA, U, and T petitions from routine arrest and removal, and in May 2026 a federal court in California stayed that rescission for certified classes, a ruling the government was expected to appeal. USCIS has also issued new guidance in 2025 and 2026 on VAWA self-petitions and on deferred action. Practitioners should confirm current policy before advising clients. Undocumented survivors can still build credit: many card issuers accept an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) in place of a Social Security number.
Additional Resources
Recorded 12/4/20
About Amy Barasch
“Intimate partner violence is really about power and control. So if you think about the physical abuse as a tool of power, it helps better understand the totality of what partner violence looks like.”
Amy Barasch is the Executive Director of Her Justice. Her Justice is a nonprofit organization that provides free legal services to women living in poverty in New York City. Through their pro bono first model, they mentor volunteer pro bono attorneys and pair them with women who have legal needs in family, matrimonial, and immigration law. Amy is responsible for leading the organization, defining its strategic direction, hiring and managing the staff and liaising with all key stakeholders and board members. She has devoted most of her career to the issue of women’s rights, in particular intimate partner violence, at nonprofits, government agencies, and law firms. Until 2012, Amy served as the Executive Director of the New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, the only State agency of its kind. Amy has published and spoken publicly about gender bias and partner violence throughout her career. She has served as Chair of the NYC Bar Association’s Domestic Violence Committee, as a member of the New York State Domestic Violence Advisory Council, and as a member of the NYS Sentencing Commission. Amy is currently co-chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Pro Bono Committee and an adjunct professor at Fordham Law.
