Samantha thought her husband was cheating. Instead, his secret gambling left them $250k worth of debt.

This story discusses financial abuse and gambling addiction, and could be triggering for some readers. 

When Samantha got pregnant with her second son in 2014, she and her new husband decided that she’d be the one to stop work and look after their new baby. 

As soon as that happened, there was a power shift. 

“He would belittle me,” she told Mamamia. “If I was questioning anything, I had no right to know because I paid no bills.”

From there, the now 41-year-old said the situation “snowballed”.

Watch: Financial Abuse 3 Women's Stories. Post continues after video.

“It just got worse and worse and worse,” she said. “I suppose you always know in the back of your head that something's not right if they're not willing to provide any answers, or their answers are a deflection on why you don't deserve it because of something that you have or haven't done.

“He made me question who I was, and if you start to feel like you’ve got no right because that’s how he’s made you feel, you lose your voice.”

‘I thought he was cheating.’

Three years after Samantha met her husband in 2010, they bought a property together in Sydney. But while both of their names were on the mortgage, Samantha didn’t handle the repayments. 

Instead, she ran the family home. Meanwhile, her husband’s behaviour grew suspicious.  

“We'd have a kid's birthday and he'd be like, ‘I've just got to go get something and I'll be back’,” she said, “and I'd be like, ‘but you know we’ve got a birthday party tomorrow night and we’ve got to organise the house?’. 

“He’d then walk back in with bags of things for me - like handbags and stuff - and then, of course, I was ‘ungrateful’ because I wouldn't look at them because I was organising a birthday party that he hadn’t helped me with. It was always backhanded.

“He'd be gone all night and I would be like, ‘so it took you all night to look at bags on Gumtree?’ And what sort of a person is awake at 3am to be looking at bags with? I didn’t know where he was, what he was doing, or where that money came from?”

For a long time, Samantha thought he was cheating.

“He had multiple phones, he was never home, he couldn’t answer his whereabouts,” she said.

But the truth was even worse than Samantha expected. While she thought her husband was cheating, he was in fact alone in his car gambling away the family’s mortgage repayments.

By the time Samantha found out he had a problem, their son was four and they were $30,000 in debt. 

“I kept accusing him of cheating, and he said, ‘Sam I need you to know, I am cheating on you, but not with a girl’,” she explained. 

“I was like, ‘what do you mean it's not a girl, what does that mean?’. And he said, ‘the only thing I'm doing is this [gambling]’.”

With a “preference” for online blackjack, Samantha’s husband was gambling away their money. But according to him, it wasn’t his fault.

“He’d give me excuses and excuses or say that he was waiting on the bank, that the bank was helping us,” she said. “I would always question it, ‘Wouldn’t you be better off paying the mortgage while they’re waiting to help you?’. He’d say, ‘Oh, I can’t, I don’t have any money. 

“He was constantly blaming the bank and he dragged it through the ombudsman. I begged him to take the deal because at that point we would have been back to normal because they were willing to wipe the $30,000 it was at the time.

“But he didn’t take the deal, and the ombudsman ruled in favour of the bank.”

Four years later, Samantha’s husband - who doesn’t see that he has a gambling problem and refuses to get help - still hasn’t made any repayments. 

The family is now $220,000 in debt and will be forced to sell the house to pay it off. 

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A lightbulb moment.

As the situation escalated over the years, Samantha said she fell into a very dark place.  

“COVID had happened and my sister had died and I was quite depressed after she died,” the mother of two said. “I thought, if I don’t get myself out of bed and get active, this is gonna go really badly.”

So Samantha returned to the workforce. Seven years after giving up her job selling car finance, she started to work for GetMyRefund, which helps people who were mis-sold a loan to reclaim their money.  

“If you’re helping someone every day and you make them feel good, it doesn’t matter what they (financial abusers) are saying to you in the background,” she said. “Because good will overpower, good overpowers the bad.”

While Samantha said helping others was rewarding and liberating, the job gave her a sense of who she was before she met her husband, and she got her voice back. 

“It was sort of the lightbulb moments from there that made me realise that I had to start thinking about how I was going to get away from this toxic situation,” she said. 

“I secretly got a house last July. I moved out for a month, and then he made me feel bad and guilted me that I was doing the wrong thing for my child and that he could change and I stupidly went back.” 

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Samantha had another moment of realisation.

“I was out to dinner with my boss, Carly, and he called me,” she said. “It was the first time he’d had the kids in eight years to babysit, and he asked me to send him $80 to feed the kids. 

“Carly just looked at me and went, ‘It's not okay’, and it was sort of that lightbulb moment that I went, ‘You know what, what you're right.’

“I've been now gone properly since December.”

Moving into her own place was 'liberating'.

While Samantha said it wasn’t easy to move her boys, now eight and 13, from their “family home”, the moment they moved into their new place was “refreshing”.

“As soon as I did it, I sat in it with no furniture and it was very liberating to sit and say, ‘I finally did it’,” she said. 

But while Samantha is enjoying her new life, the weight of the couple’s debt hangs over her. And she’s still being kept in the dark.

“He is still shielding me from the bank,” she explained. “He deals with the bank directly, even though it’s in my name too, and I believe they’ve told him that he was six months to sell the house or they’ll come in and sell it.” 

Samantha said she doesn’t want anything from the sale of the house, she just wants to pay off the $37,500 debt that she incurred while trying to give her husband money when he “urgently” asked for it. 

“Me being the idiot that I am, I did it,” she said. “I should have known full well that he was never going to pay it, but you’re blinded and told otherwise.”

The first debt is for a $20,000 personal loan, then two credit cards - one worth $7,500 and the other worth $10,000 - which are both maxed out. 

“For a very long time, I would do what he said,” Samantha explained. “It’s hard, you know you can see it, but he kept telling me otherwise.”

“It's only now that I've gone that I can block out the noise, that I can start to realise that what he was telling me and saying to me - it was never about me.”

Samantha is determined to be heard

According to Samantha’s boss and founder of GetMyRefund, Carly Woods, more than 2.2 million Australians have experienced financial abuse in their current or past relationships.

“What is concerning is that this form of abuse often goes unnoticed due to a lack of recognition and reporting,” she told Mamamia. 

“However, it’s essential to understand that financial abuse is formally recogised as a type of family violence under Australia’s Family Law Act.”

She’s urging people to take control of their own money so they’re set up to leave toxic and financially abusive relationships. 

Carly’s first step is contacting a legal practitioner who can provide free advice and assistance, while investigating various resources, like podcasts and guidance from loved ones, can be empowering. 

She added that part-time employment can also help people gain financial confidence and independence, and setting up separate bank accounts can “enable you to handle your money freely”.

“Remember you do not have to struggle without support on this journey,” she said. “You're setting the road for a stronger financial future by getting help, growing your knowledge, and taking proactive measures.” 

For Samantha, the defining moment on when to take action is the minute your partner makes you feel that you can't leave because you're financially dependent on them.

“From then on, start to put money aside - even if it's $5 a week - in an account they don't know about because it is hard to leave, and it's expensive,” she said. 

“Start to put $5 away a week and let it build and build because you still won’t be ready to leave for a little bit further along, and surround yourself by people that are strong.”

While Samantha still has an uphill battle ahead of her, she is now determined to be heard. 

“It's not easy to talk about [financial abuse] because you’re conditioned that it’s not yours to talk about, it’s not your problem,” she said. ”But it still happens to you, so you have every right to tell your story.” 

Image: Getty

For 24-hour confidential counselling, information and support for problem gambling please call 1800 858 858 or visit the Gambling Help website. 

If you think you may be experiencing depression or another mental health problem, please contact your general practitioner. If you’re based in Australia, please contact Lifeline 13 11 14 for support or beyondblue 1300 22 4636. 

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