Domestic violence, defined as a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors that intimate partners use to gain or maintain power and control in a relationship, is a widespread problem that affects people of all races, cultures, and socioeconomic statuses. Domestic violence includes assaultive tactics, like physical abuse and sexual abuse. Accordingly, all states recognize acts of physical violence as domestic violence that qualifies for a civil legal remedy.
Domestic violence also encompasses a broad range of abusive tactics that include non-assaultive behaviors such as threats and intimidation, financial abuse, and stalking. The patterned use of these more subtle and nuanced tactics to control and exert dominance over an intimate partner is known as coercive control. Ultimately, the goal of coercive control is to isolate the victim from support, deprive them of their independence, and regulate their daily activities through use of coercive tactics.
While physical violence can be used as a coercive tactic, coercive control can exist without the use of physical violence. Accordingly, all 50 states include specific non-assaultive behaviors, such as stalking, harassment, and interference with child custody, in their statutory definitions of domestic violence. However, states vary widely on which non-assaultive, coercive tactics are included in their statutory definitions of domestic violence and thus warrant civil legal intervention.
Recently, several states have expanded their definitions of domestic violence in family law cases to include coercive control. Statutes passed in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Washington explicitly include coercive control in the definition of domestic violence and provide nonexhaustive lists of qualifying coercive behaviors. For instance, California’s statute includes tje examples of reproductive coercion and isolation from sources of support. Connecticut’s statute contains examples such as committing or threatening to commit cruelty to animals and threatening to release sexual images. And Washington’s includes litigation abuse, or the misuse of court proceedings to control, harass, intimidate, coerce, or impoverish an intimate partner, as an example of coercive control in its statutory definition. Victims of domestic violence in these states can now seek civil legal remedies for coercive behaviors that previously may not have qualified as domestic violence.
In addition to defining domestic violence more broadly, various states have also addressed coercive control by enacting legislation targeted at specific coercive tactics, such as litigation abuse, financial abuse, and animal abuse.
Litigation abuse, also known as vexatious litigation and paper abuse, is a coercive tactic that perpetrators of domestic violence use to exert power and reestablish control over survivors long after the relationship has ended. The most common abusive litigation tactic is to deliberately run up legal expenses by filing frivolous requests and demanding excessive or irrelevant information in the discovery process in the hopes of leaving the survivor without representation. Since disputes relating to marriage, shared property, and children provide a clear pathway to legal proceedings, litigation abuse is often perpetrated by former spouses or co-parents. In fact, child support and custody litigation are the most common legal processes through which perpetrators of abuse prolong contact with survivors.
To combat litigation abuse, a few states have passed laws dealing directly with the issue in the family law context. Currently, survivors in Tennessee, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington can request prefiling restrictions on perpetrators of abuse who are found to have misused the court system to harass survivors. Additionally, Connecticut allows survivors to seek sanctions against abusive litigants in family law matters. Yet, combating litigation abuse still remains difficult because it is often hard to draw the line between bad faith, abusive litigation, and zealous advocacy in an adversarial litigation setting. Further, judges are hesitant to interfere with litigants’ right to access the court.
Financial abuse is a coercive tactic that involves gaining and maintaining power and control over a partner’s financial resources to create financial dependence. Financial abuse has evolved in the modern era of consumer lending to include nonconsensual, credit-related transactions, or coerced debt. Coerced debt can take many forms, such as forcing a partner to obtain loans, refinancing a home or car loan without a partner’s knowledge, and opening financial accounts in a partner’s name. Survivors suffer detrimental, long-term effects from coerced debt, like the inability to obtain a place to live after acquiring large amounts of debt and significant damage to their credit scores.
In response to the prevalence of debt coercion, California has recently enacted a statute that allows survivors to request an order stating that specific debts were incurred as a result of domestic violence. The court order could then be used to help survivors dispute the debt with creditors or consumer reporting agencies. Further, Maine’s coerced debt statute mandates that debt collectors cease collecting debts and requires credit reporting agencies to reinvestigate and remove any reference to the debts after a consumer provides documentation that the debt was the result of financial abuse. Similar legislation addressing coerced debt is being considered in several other states.
Perpetrators of abuse also sometimes abuse or threaten to abuse companion pets as a coercive tactic. Because animals play an integral role in our lives, animal abuse and threats of animal abuse commonly force survivors into remaining in abusive relationships. Currently, 35 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico include provisions related to pets in their domestic violence protection orders. Most of these states allow survivors to petition for exclusive possession of a pet and identify harm or threat of harm of a pet as prohibited abusive behavior.
While many states include provisions related to pets in their domestic violence protection orders, statutory requirements vary from state to state. For example, states differ on the type of animal that qualifies for protection. Some states provide protection for “any animal,” while others do not extend protection to livestock and farm animals. Additionally, some states require proof of actual harm to an animal to qualify for protection in a restraining order, while other states include threats to harm or kill an animal as qualifying abuse.
Coercive control is often present in abusive relationships, yet it is difficult to prove because it manifests through subtle and nuanced tactics of abuse. States have recently begun addressing coercive control in family law cases in numerous ways, from expanding definitions of domestic violence to passing targeted legislation aimed at specific insidious behaviors. Thus, it is imperative for family law attorneys to identify coercive control in their cases and be aware of the current legal definition of domestic violence and other avenues available to survivors who have experienced coercive control.
