Effective September 18, 2024, Massachusetts added coercive control to the legal definition of abuse under Chapter 209A. It covers a pattern of behavior intended to threaten, intimidate, harass, isolate, control, coerce, or compel compliance of a family or household member, and the statute gives nine illustrative examples. It also recognizes a separate route where a single act is enough. You no longer have to point to physical violence to ask a court for a protective order.
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Domestic violence law in Massachusetts historically centered on physical harm or the threat of it. If there were no bruises, no broken door, and no explicit threat, people were often told that what they were living through was not something the law had a name for.
The September 2024 amendment to Chapter 209A changed that. It recognizes that abuse often looks like control rather than violence, and it gives victims and courts a statutory vocabulary for conduct that was previously hard to fit within the existing categories.
What Is Coercive Control Under the Amended Statute?
Coercive control is defined as a pattern of behavior intended to threaten, intimidate, harass, isolate, control, coerce, or compel compliance of a family or household member.
That is a meaningful departure from the incident-based model that governs the other three abuse categories under Chapter 209A. Those categories ask what happened on a particular day. Coercive control can instead be established through a pattern of conduct over time, rather than requiring proof of one severe act.
For many people, that is the difference between having a case and being told there is nothing to bring. The harm in a controlling relationship is rarely concentrated in a single moment. It accumulates.
What Are the Statutory Examples of the Pattern Prong?
The statute lists nine illustrative examples of conduct that can form a pattern of coercive control. The list is expressly non-exhaustive, which means conduct not named here can still qualify. It is a description of the territory, not a checklist that has to be satisfied.
Nine Statutory Examples of Coercive Control
G.L. c. 209A § 1
- Isolation. Isolating the person from friends, relatives, or other sources of support.
- Deprivation. Depriving the person of basic necessities.
- Monitoring and control. Controlling, regulating, or monitoring the person's movements, communications, daily behavior, finances, economic resources, or access to services, including by technological means.
- Compelled conduct. Compelling the person to engage in conduct from which they have a legal right to abstain.
- Crimes against a child or relative. Committing or threatening to commit crimes against a child or relative of the person.
- Harm to a pet. Threatening to harm or committing animal cruelty against an animal the person has an emotional connection to.
- Property damage. Damaging or threatening to damage the person's property.
- Intimate images. Threatening to publish or actually publishing sexually explicit images of the person without consent.
- Abusive litigation. Repeated, meritless court filings intended to harass, intimidate, or exhaust the other party.
These examples are illustrative and expressly non-exhaustive.
Abusive litigation is on this list for a reason. Being dragged back into court over and over on filings that go nowhere is exhausting and expensive, and it has long been used as a way to keep control of someone after a relationship ends. Massachusetts now names it as conduct that can form part of a pattern of coercive control.
Can a Single Act Count as Coercive Control?
Yes. Coercive control does not always require a pattern. The statute separately recognizes that a single act can itself qualify:
The Single-Act Route
Where One Incident Is Enough
- Harming or attempting to harm a child or relative.
- Committing or attempting an act of animal cruelty.
- Publishing or attempting to publish sexually explicit images of the person without consent.
This matters because of a mistaken assumption people make when they read about coercive control for the first time. Someone whose experience is a single serious incident, not an ongoing pattern, can still meet the statutory definition through this route. Readers should not conclude that a one-time event automatically falls outside the statute.
The Pattern Prong
A course of conduct over time, measured against the nine illustrative examples. No single incident has to be severe on its own.
The Single-Act Prong
One qualifying act is enough: harm or attempted harm to a child or relative, animal cruelty, or publishing intimate images without consent.
How Is This Different From Domestic Violence Generally?
Our guide to leaving a marriage when domestic violence is involved covers Chapter 209A broadly, including how to obtain an order, what an order can require, and how abuse affects custody. That is the wider picture, and it is the right place to start if you are planning to leave.
This is a narrower, discrete update. Coercive control is now its own recognized abuse category under Chapter 209A, distinct from physical abuse. It sits alongside the incident-based categories rather than replacing them, and a case can rest on it alone.
It is worth its own page precisely because people search for this specific term, often before they have language for what is happening to them. Recognizing the name is frequently the first step someone takes.
Has Any Court Struck Down the Coercive Control Provision?
No. As of mid-2026, no appellate decision has struck down or narrowed the coercive control provision. Recent Appeals Court decisions have applied it, and have confirmed both the September 18, 2024 effective date and the non-exhaustive nature of the pattern-prong examples.
This is worth stating plainly, because a legal research database carries a "recognized as unconstitutional" flag on G.L. c. 209A § 1 that is easy to misread as a warning about coercive control. It is not. That flag traces to Campbell v. Commonwealth, 494 Mass. 750 (2024), a pretrial detention and bail case about whether rape qualifies as a predicate offense under the "force clause" of the bail statute, G.L. c. 276 § 58A. The flag lands on c. 209A § 1 only because § 58A's separate "abuse clause" cross-references the c. 209A § 1 abuse definition for an unrelated purpose. The provision actually held void for vagueness in that line of cases was § 58A's own residual clause, not anything in the coercive control amendment.
If you have read something suggesting the coercive control law is on shaky ground, that is almost certainly where it came from, and it does not apply here.
What Should You Do If This Describes Your Situation?
If you want to see which statutory categories your situation touches, our coercive control self-screener walks through them privately. It gives you no score and keeps no record, and it carries the same quick exit button this page does.
Start by writing things down. Pattern cases are built on specifics: dates, messages, transfers, the times you were told you could not go somewhere, the accounts you lost access to. A pattern is much easier to show a judge when it exists somewhere other than memory. Keep those records somewhere the other person cannot reach.
If you are already in a divorce or custody case, tell your attorney. Conduct that seemed like nothing more than a difficult personality may now be legally relevant, both to a protective order and to the parenting arrangement.
And if the controlling behavior includes money, isolation, or monitoring, be careful about how and when you take the first step. Safety planning comes before filing.
The Bottom Line
Massachusetts law now recognizes what survivors have described for decades: that abuse is often a system of control rather than a series of assaults. If you have been told that what you are experiencing does not count because nobody hit you, that answer is out of date.
If you are not sure whether what is happening in your home fits the statute, contact Brigantine Law and we will talk it through with you.
Reflects Massachusetts law as of July 2026. Sources: Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 209A, § 1 (West); Nan N. v. Rex R., 106 Mass. App. Ct. 601 (2026); K.D.F. v. D.M.F., 106 Mass. App. Ct. 1137 (2026); Campbell v. Commonwealth, 494 Mass. 750 (2024).