“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.