Whether what's happening even counts as abuse under RA 9262 — psychological violence without a hand ever being raised, economic control, threats, and the reach of the law beyond marriage and beyond your front door.
No — he doesn't have to hit you. RA 9262 §3(C) defines psychological violence as acts or omissions causing or likely to cause mental or emotional suffering, and names repeated verbal abuse, public ridicule or humiliation, and intimidation among its examples. Physical harm is a separate form of abuse under §3, not a requirement for the others to count.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →Yes — controlling your money is named economic abuse on its own. RA 9262 §3(D) defines economic abuse as acts that make or attempt to make a woman financially dependent, and lists controlling her own money or property, or solely controlling conjugal money or property, as one of the specific acts. No physical violence is required for this form to apply.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →Yes — RA 9262 isn't limited to marriage. §3 covers a wife, a former wife, and any woman with whom a man has or had a sexual or dating relationship, or with whom he has a common child, so a current or former boyfriend is covered the same way a husband would be.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →It can. RA 9262 §3(C) defines psychological violence as any act or omission causing or likely to cause mental or emotional suffering, and its list of examples — intimidation, harassment, stalking, among others — is explicitly "not limited to" those items. The statute doesn't name phone or location monitoring specifically, so whether a given pattern qualifies turns on whether it causes, or is likely to cause, that suffering.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →Generally, no — but the law carries one specific exception. RA 9262 §3(D)(1) names preventing you from engaging in a legitimate profession, occupation, business, or activity as economic abuse, except where your spouse or partner objects on valid, serious, and moral grounds as defined in Article 73 of the Family Code. Outside that narrow, defined exception, stopping you from working is economic abuse under §3(D).
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →It can be — the law doesn't require him to give nothing. RA 9262 §5(e)(2) penalizes depriving or threatening to deprive you of financial support legally due, and separately names deliberately providing insufficient support as its own punishable act. Giving some money doesn't put this outside the law if the amount is deliberately short of what's due.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →Yes — RA 9262 §5(f) names this specifically. It penalizes inflicting, or threatening to inflict, physical harm on oneself in order to control a woman's actions or decisions, so a threat of self-harm used to keep you from leaving, or to make you decide something, is a punishable act on its own — separate from any harm directed at you.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →The law names it specifically. RA 9262 §3(C) lists "mental infidelity" among its examples of psychological violence, alongside intimidation, harassment, and repeated verbal abuse, as an act that can cause or is likely to cause mental or emotional suffering.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →Yes — RA 9262 §3(C) names this specifically as a form of psychological violence. It includes causing or allowing you to witness the physical, sexual, or psychological abuse of a member of the family you belong to, so being made to watch him abuse another family member — not only abuse directed at you — is itself covered.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →Yes — both are named specifically. RA 9262 §3(C) includes, within its definition of psychological violence, causing or allowing you to witness pornography in any form, and causing or allowing you to witness abusive injury to pets, alongside witnessing abuse of a family member.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →Yes, on both counts. RA 9262 §3 explicitly covers a "former wife," not only a current spouse, and states that the abuse it covers applies "within or without the family abode" — meaning it isn't limited to acts that happen inside the home you shared.
Read the full answer, sources & FAQ →Facing this yourself?
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