2026年6月17日 / 美国东部时间上午11:25 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
作者：卡拉·塔巴奇尼克 新闻编辑
在第二段婚姻步入第四年时，丈夫提出让她以自己的名义办理一张信用卡，她没有多问。但她说，这段关系随后演变成了虐待。当她离开这段婚姻时，发现自己陷入了财务困境——前夫使用了这张信用卡却未还款，导致她的信用评分暴跌数百点。
“我从未使用过那张卡片，”朱丽叶特告诉CBS新闻，出于个人安全考虑，她要求不要公开全名。
但如今她名下背负着近7000美元的债务，却没有明确的办法解除共同账户。朱丽叶特表示，银行要求两人当面到场才能注销账户，但她已有针对前夫的保护令，不愿与对方共处一室。
“这关乎安全问题，”她说，还补充道，她无法理解也无法接受银行竟然没有一套系统可以帮助家庭暴力幸存者。
她说她带着两个孩子逃离了前夫的家，住进了布朗克斯区一间蟑螂横行的公寓。她说，在信用评分从约800分跌至460分后，她别无选择。没有其他房东愿意把房子租给她。
朱丽叶特的经历与成千上万名家庭暴力幸存者如出一辙——但美国各州正在陆续出台相关立法，有望为她和其他经济虐待幸存者提供帮助。
去年签署生效的纽约州相关法案将于本周三正式实施，届时纽约将成为第八部允许家庭暴力、虐待老年人以及人口贩运幸存者免除被迫债务的州。
该法案的支持者表示，这种救济可能会改变幸存者的人生。反对者则称，该法案极易被滥用。在金融机构的反对声中，纽约州的法案经过了修订，缩小了救济范围。美国金融服务协会的一位发言人表示，修正案填补了法律漏洞：“专为合法幸存者设立的救济途径，不能同时沦为骗子的投机通道。”
根据幸存者代理与正义中心的数据，半数家庭暴力幸存者被迫背负最高达2万美元的小额债务，但这种影响会波及她们生活的方方面面。
“被迫债务的连锁影响非常广泛，”该中心执行主任埃里卡·萨斯曼告诉CBS新闻。在该组织为幸存者争取经济权利的二十年间，她亲眼目睹债务成为获取住房、就业或通勤工具的障碍——而这些都是保障人身安全所需的条件。
“债务会不断累积，随时间滚雪球般增长，”萨斯曼说。
当经济拮据时，虐待便会开始
和其他许多经济虐待幸存者一样，朱丽叶特对丈夫日益严重的赌博问题选择视而不见。她一门心思攻读护理学位，还和十几岁的儿子以及已上大学的女儿一起，在一个全新的国家生活。她在牙买加丧偶后，与第二任丈夫交往六年后跟随他来到美国，渴望开启新生活。
朱丽叶特说，前夫动辄下注4000美元，但他的薪水大多都用来还赌债了。后来他的债务开始超过收入——暴力也随之而来，她说。
“经济变得拮据，也就是从那时起，虐待真正开始了，”朱丽叶特说。
一天晚上，她正在为护理资格考试复习时，两人发生了争吵。她说，前夫砸坏了一把椅子并威胁她之后，她报了警并决定离开。
一名警察给了她“她的正义”组织的联系方式——这是一家总部位于纽约的非营利组织，为暴力受害者提供法律援助，并建议她如果需要帮助可以联系他们。朱丽叶特联系了那里的一名律师，后者帮助她在2018年提起了离婚诉讼。
“我做好了离开的准备。而那正是困难的开始，”她说，回想起独自生活后遭遇的种种难题。
两人有共同财产和一笔未结清的信用卡欠款。她和律师表示，前夫没有偿还信用卡账单。
逾期账单和催款通知开始陆续寄来，朱丽叶特说她根本无从了解具体情况。“我看不到交易记录，收不到他逾期还款的提醒，也拿不到显示逾期还款的账单，”她说。
朱丽叶特说，她不好意思向在牙买加的父母求助。
对部分人而言，这是一条清晰的经济脱困之路
经过五年多的诉讼，朱丽叶特和前夫终于在2023年完成了离婚手续——法院认定前夫应承担这笔信用卡债务。
她的律师表示，他们曾多次尝试与银行协商，但银行没有任何合理的系统可以将朱丽叶特从信用卡账户中移除，他们希望新法案能够解决这一问题。
“银行可以而且应该去找真正有责任的一方追债。我们在离婚案件中经常遇到这种情况。但现在不同的是，不再需要通过离婚程序，而是可以通过其他途径直接与银行对接寻求救济，”“她的正义”组织法律服务主任苏珊娜·索尔说。
纽约州的被迫债务救济法案无法帮助朱丽叶特，因为该法案仅适用于生效日期6月17日之后产生的债务，但她希望分享自己的经历能够提高人们对这一问题的关注。
除纽约州外，加利福尼亚州、得克萨斯州和伊利诺伊州等也已出台类似法案，为受害者提供直接向银行主张债权异议的途径。这一转变让幸存者可以绕过传统的法庭诉讼程序，比如耗时漫长的离婚流程，通过与债权人直接沟通寻求救济。
“这是一个至关重要的问题，鉴于联邦层面缺乏相关保护措施，各州已经主动承担起保护幸存者的责任，”萨斯曼说。
纽约州的幸存者现在可以直接向债权人提出债务异议。如果申诉成功，债权人可以转而向真正的责任方追债。
“所以债务并不会被抹去，但幸存者的还款责任将被免除，”“她的正义”组织政策主任蕾切尔·布劳恩斯坦说。
收到被迫债务通知书后，债权人必须审查该账户，在信用报告中将该债务标记为“争议中”，并对幸存者的联系信息保密。如果银行接受该异议，必须停止向幸存者追债。
专家们确实对银行将如何处理这类申请存在一些担忧。不过，如果债权人不遵守法律，幸存者可以起诉债权人，也可以起诉被指认的施暴者。
如今朱丽叶特已经从护理学校毕业。她的女儿大学毕业了，儿子参军了。她的信用评分也在慢慢回升。她说，最近查询时，分数已经稳定在600多分。
“到目前为止，我还能做很多事情，但信用报告上仍然挂着这笔债务，”她说。
Her ex racked up $7,000 of credit card debt, crumbling her finances. Now, a new law could require abusers to pay.
June 17, 2026 / 11:25 AM EDT / CBS News
By Cara Tabachnick News Editor
Four years into her second marriage, she didn’t ask questions when her husband asked her to sign on to a credit card in her name. But then the relationship turned abusive, she said. When she left her marriage, she found herself in financial distress, with her credit score tanking hundreds of points after her former husband used the credit card and didn’t make payments.
“I never used the card that was issued,” Juliette, who asked CBS News not to use her full name for personal safety reasons, said.
But she now had close to $7,000 of debt in her name and no clear way to remove herself from their shared account. The bank wanted the couple to meet in person to dissolve the account, Juliette said, but she had an order of protection against her former husband and didn’t want to be in the same room.
“There was an issue of safety,” she said, adding she couldn’t believe or understand how the bank didn’t have a system in place to assist survivors of domestic abuse.
She said she fled her former husband’s home with her two children to live in a roach-filled apartment in the Bronx. She had no choice, she said, after her credit score fell from around 800 to 460. No other landlord would rent to her.
Juliette has a story similar to thousands of domestic violence survivors — but states are beginning to enact legislation that could help them and other survivors of economic abuse.
Legislation in New York, which was signed into law last year and goes into effect on Wednesday, will make it the eighth state to allow relief from coerced debt for survivors of domestic violence, elder abuse and human trafficking.
Proponents of the law say that relief can be life changing. Opponents say the law can be ripe for abuse. New York’s law was amended after pushback from financial institutions, narrowing the scope of relief. A spokesperson for the American Financial Services Association said the amendment closed the loopholes: “A remedy built for legitimate survivors can’t double as a roadmap for cheats.”
Half of domestic violence survivors are coerced into relatively small debts of up to $20,000, according to the Center for Survivor Agency and Justice, but the impact reverberates across their life.
“The rippling effects of coerced debt are quite vast,” CSAJ Executive Director Erika Sussman told CBS News. Over the two decades that her organization has been advocating for economic rights for survivors, she has seen debt serve as a barrier to housing, employment, or transportation to work — all things needed for physical safety.
“It adds up and compounds over time,” said Sussman.
When money is tight, abuse can start
Like so many other survivors of economic abuse, Juliette brushed aside her growing concerns about her husband’s gambling problems. Instead, she focused on studying for her nursing degree and raising her teen son and college-age daughter in a brand new country. Widowed in Jamaica, she had followed her second husband to the United States six years after they started dating, eager for a new life.
He would routinely place bets of $4,000, Juliette said, but his salary mostly covered his gambling. Then his debts started to outpace his earnings — and violence began, she said.
“Money got tight, and that is when the abuse really started,” Juliette said.
One night, while she was studying for a nursing exam, the couple got into a fight. She said that after her then-husband broke a chair and threatened her, she called the cops and decided to leave.
A police officer gave her the phone number for Her Justice, a New York-based nonprofit that represents victims of violence, and advised her to call if she needed help. Juliette worked with a lawyer there who helped her file for divorce in 2018.
“I’d make arrangements to leave. And that’s where it started,” she said, recounting the difficulties she faced once she was on her own.
The couple had property in common and an outstanding credit card. She and her attorney said her former husband didn’t pay the credit card bills.
Notices of late statements and bills started to arrive, and Juliette said she had no way of really knowing what was happening. “I could not see the transactions, not get prompts on his late payments or get statements with the late payments,” she said.
Juliette said she was embarrassed to turn to her parents in Jamaica for help.
For some, a clear economic path forward
After more than five years of litigation, Juliette and her former husband finalized their divorce in 2023 — and he was deemed responsible for the credit card debt.
Her lawyer said they had tried to negotiate with the bank several times. The bank didn’t have any reasonable systems to remove Juliette from the card, her lawyer said, which they hope the new law can address.
“The bank can and should go after the person who’s rightfully responsible. So we’ve seen this a lot in the divorce. But what’s new here is now, instead of doing it through the divorce, there’s this other remedy that involves the banks directly,” said Susanna Saul, director of legal services for Her Justice.
The New York coerced debt law won’t help Juliette because it will only apply to debt incurred for survivors after the effective date, June 17, but her hope is that sharing her story will raise awareness for others.
Beyond New York, states like California, Texas, and Illinois have enacted similar measures, granting victims a mechanism to contest liabilities directly with banks. This shift allows survivors to bypass traditional court litigation, such as lengthy divorce proceedings, and seek relief by engaging with creditors.
“This is a critical issue and given the absence of protection at the federal level, states have really taken up the charge to protect survivors,” Sussman said.
New York-based survivors will now be able to challenge their debt directly with creditors. If they succeed, the creditor can go after the responsible party.
“So, the debt is not erased, but the survivor’s liability is discharged,” said Rachel Braunstein, policy director for Her Justice.
After getting a Notice of Coerced Debt, the creditor must review the account, mark the debt “disputed” on credit reports and keep the survivor’s contact info confidential. If the bank accepts the notice, the creditor must stop collecting from the survivor.
Experts do share some concern about how banks will manage the requests. The survivors, however, can sue the creditor and also the alleged abuser if they fail to follow the law.
Juliette has now graduated from nursing school. Her daughter graduated from college. Her son joined the military. And slowly, her credit is inching its way back up. Last she checked, she said, it was hovering in the 600s.
“I’m still able to do a lot of things to date, but the report still has it sitting there,” she said.
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