Expand: Financial Abuse

The trope currently focuses on specific forms of using finances to abuse people. In its present form, it focuses on children being financially abused, while acknowledging that the elderly, and even regular adults may experience it as well.

It's also damned near minimalist. There are particularly mean forms of this not even covered (such as frivilous lawsuit threats, extortion, and certain kinds of divorce filings). There's plenty of ways that people are abused by either directly hurting them financially, or effecting their ability to make income, though this seems to mostly cover making and keeping people dependent. Even on that front it could be expanded.

I'll gladly do the work myself if people think this is overwhelming, but I see a trope that needs a ton of expansion.

edited 4th Jan '12 10:54:05 PM by OnagaIsComingToTown

It could definitely be expanded, but since it's an abuse trope, I don't think it should include things like out-and-out cons or extortion. The core trope is about someone in a position of trust betraying that trust in financial matters. As long as the expansion focuses on that, it should be okay.

Abuse can be about betrayal, but it is much more complex than that. I do agree that there should be much more to it than personal gain however. Conning somebody as a means of asserting financial control or to torment the person can and should count, whereas doing so just to get the money should not.

The important thing isn't the motivation, it's the relationship between the two people involved. Abuse Tropes necessitate a close relationship — family, spouses or significant others, close friends, etc. If a stranger or acquiescence scams someone of their money, that's still a terrible thing to happen, but it's not what Financial Abuse is about.

It says it's a sub trope of Abusive Parents, which already has a financial abuse section.

I think this significant enough to stand on it's own as a trope, but it needs a less broad name like Finacially Abused Child.

EDIT: My mistake. I thought that this was just the examples from the financial abuse section from Abusive Parents.

edited 5th Jan '12 5:52:59 PM by DrStarky

Right, but the point is that there are many more ways to financially abuse somebody than what is currently gone over, not whether or not a stranger can be an abuser.

However, I'm not against the rename to Financially Abused Child, given the examples. But if we go that way, we should still have a trope by the current name which cover the broader subject at hand.

You can financially abuse people other than your own children. You can do this to a spouse. You can do this to a parent, especially an elderly parent. I don't think narrowing it is a good thing.

Well, it had a lot more examples than I expected.

Lots of natter, too, from what I could see.

Exactly Shima. The trope is in serious need of broadening. The only real issue I see here, is whether or not to create the Financially Abused Child subtrope, and move current examples there. Other than that, I say it is long overdue for mass expanding.

Well, the Parental Abuse trope was just un-softsplit because there was too much overlap and examples were being duplicated as one sort doesn't tend to happen without others.

I would say that making that new subtrope would just bring the problem back.

So, is it worth it to make a page for financial abuse of one's parents or other elders (most often relatives of some type, but not always), but not of kids by parents?

It's worth making a general supertrope for Financial Abuse because especially with adults it's used to fuel certain plots it's not with kids. I just don't think we need a subtrope of both the two supertropes.

Here's what I'm thinking. First, we remove all specifications as to the victim within the article. It's about the abuse, not who's being abused, as that is what examples are for. Second, we divide this into 3 subtypes (within the same article of course) namely:

Type I - Financial abuse of power. This is the type currently described in the article, and involves someone abusing the fact that others are dependent on them, sometimes trying to keep them dependent and keep abusing them.

Type II - Financial abuse of the law. Frivolous Lawsuit is one type of this, but far from the only type. It can also involve blackmailing them by threatening to report them in ways that get hefty fines. Unfortunately, the most common form of this involves abuse of family law. Not just with respect to divorce proceeding, but child custody as well.

Type III - Criminal financial abuse. Stealing, falsifying reports to Wall Street, and scamming. Basically, things generally considered "criminal", even if they aren't illegal in all countries.

Third, we divide examples among the 3 types. This will solve the problem of what to do with the current examples.

edited 21st Jan '12 1:19:13 PM by OnagaIsComingToTown

It does not need expansion. I changed it from 'kids' to 'dependents', which gathers all the victims into one group. It was also creeping into being an essay on financial abuse, rather than the description of a storytelling trope, so I trimmed it.

All those categories of victimizing people through financial methods should be separate articles, not sections within this one. Every scam using money that has a victim could be called 'abuse.' I suppose an index of Financial Crimes could be of interest.

edited 21st Jan '12 2:51:31 PM by FastEddie

Separate articles isn't a problem per se, but what would we call them in the first place? Technically, they are indeed methods of abusing people financially.

Type II could be Lawful Financial Extortion, or Theft By Court, and Type III could be called Asset Destruction or simply Monetary Cheapshot

Problem is, I just see Financial Abuse as a better name for either, hence the proposition of expansion, rather than new articles.