Family life ended for Francesca Onody on a late summer evening in 2022 when her abusive husband doused their cottage with petrol as police arrived to arrest him. She and her children escaped seconds before the building exploded. Her husband Malcolm Baker died in the blaze.
That night, Onody lost her husband, her home, her pets and her possessions.
She also lost all her money. Shortly before he died, Baker had emptied their joint bank accounts and cancelled her mortgage protection and buildings insurance.
Three years later, she faced losing the little she had left. The mortgage lender, Halifax, announced that it planned to repossess the property to pay off the £35,000 of mortgage arrears and other charges that had accrued since Baker’s death. That included the land around the ruins of her home, where she and her children have been living in a caravan ever since the fire.
“It feels like my world has once again imploded,” she said when she first contacted Guardian Money in June last year. “I saw my home razed to the ground. I’ve scraped together to put a very basic roof over mine and my kids’ heads, and now the Halifax want to literally pull the ground out from under our feet.”
This month, three-and-a-half years after the explosion, Onody, 53, was able to pay off the mortgage and take possession of the land. Halifax halted proceedings after Guardian Money intervened. It also cancelled the interest and fees that had accrued on the mortgage during Onody’s long legal battles to secure probate.
Her ordeal exposes the legal and financial obstacles faced by domestic abuse victims long after a relationship has ended.
In the years since Baker’s death, she has had to challenge his will, which left her with nothing, battle banks and insurers, and fund a barrister to represent her at his inquest.
Meanwhile, red tape at the Probate Office and the Land Registry left her in legal limbo for months.
Worst of all, at one point she faced potential blame for Baker’s death when the Home Office commissioned a domestic homicide review to establish whether he was the abuse victim. The Home Office later apologised to her. It acknowledged in a letter that Baker was the perpetrator and that the investigation had “continued the dynamics of abuse” that Onody had suffered during the 18-year marriage.
“My husband’s campaign of financial and domestic abuse was strategically planned to continue after his death, and the subsequent lack of recognition and support from organisations has inflicted further years of fear on me,” she says.
Onody’s nightmare began years before the explosion. Baker, a Metropolitan police superintendent, had become mentally unstable after retiring from the Met in 2011, his inquest was told. He was also a heavy drinker. Onody says matters escalated when she demanded a divorce.
“He became more vindictive, threatening to ruin mine and my kids’ lives,” she says. “On one occasion he left a dead rabbit in my bed. We lived in a constant state of anxiety, wondering whether in a drunken stupor or one of his rages he might destroy our house around us while we slept.”
Baker began stockpiling canisters of petrol in the family home, Onody says, and she made frequent calls to the police as his behaviour became more threatening.
On his final night, she had dialled 999 after a confrontation. Baker barricaded himself in an upstairs bedroom when officers arrived. Onody and her children were downstairs when petrol began streaming through the sitting room ceiling. Police evacuated the house, which caught fire seconds later and exploded. Baker, still barricaded upstairs, could not be saved.
Onody and her children moved into a caravan alongside the ruin without heating or piped water. Since the deeds to the property and the mortgage were in Baker’s sole name, she was unable to sell the land or apply to rebuild the cottage.
It took her 28 months to successfully contest his will under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act and to be appointed as personal representative of the estate.
During that time, she was not authorised to discuss the mortgage with the Halifax since she was not named in probate.
She took over the administration of the estate in February 2025 and discovered that in the interim, £34,700 of mortgage arrears and legal fees had built up, and a repossession order had been issued by the Halifax.
Halifax, she claims, initially agreed to allow her to remortgage the estate in her own name so she could sell the land, but last June it withdrew the offer and warned her that the property would be repossessed unless she paid off the debt within two months.
It is at that point that Onody first contacted the Guardian for help.
“I am being punished for my husband’s actions, with the Halifax now acting in his place as financial controller and abuser,” she said in an impact statement. “If I had a mortgage in my name and lodged with Land Registry, I would be able to move forward with my plan to sell the land, pay off all debts and build us a home and a secure, fear-free future.”
Halifax suspended the repossession order after Guardian Money questioned its handling of the case. It agreed to transfer the mortgage into her name once the deeds to the property had been amended to show her as the owner. It also admitted that a staff member had erroneously worked on a mortgage application for her last February and paid her £500 as an apology.
A spokesperson for Halifax said: “We truly sympathise with Ms Onody and understand how incredibly difficult this has been for her and her family. Since she wasn’t the mortgage holder and wasn’t named in probate, we faced some legal limitations early on. Despite this, we tried to be as flexible as possible.”
The spokesperson said the bank paused legal action several times while court matters were ongoing, and also provided thousands of pounds in financial support, including removing all interest and charges since Baker’s death.
The bank spokesperson added: “When it came to transferring the mortgage into her name, we asked her to meet with us to review affordability and explore ways to reduce her monthly payments. However, she decided to pay off the outstanding mortgage balance in full before this meeting could happen.”
The Land Registry agreed to expedite the application for the transfer of deeds when we got in touch.
Onody became legal owner of the land in November, and this month she paid off the mortgage.
She now hopes to sell the land and buy a property elsewhere to rebuild a life with her children.
“It’s been a really tough time for years,” she says, “but I’m ever-optimistic that there can be some degree of happy ending.”
The Financial Conduct Authority introduced new rules in 2023 to force financial firms to improve support for vulnerable customers. The Consumer Duty requires companies to act flexibly to protect customers in vulnerable situations but, according to the charity Surviving Economic Abuse, victims like Onody are still being failed.
“This story is a heartbreaking but sadly all-too-common reflection of the devastating harm caused by economic abusers,” says its chief executive Sam Smethers.
“Perpetrators will use any tool at their disposal – from insurance products to joint mortgages – to maintain control and cause earth-shattering harm to victim-survivors. Financial services [companies] have made significant progress in the support they offer victim-survivors of economic abuse, but there’s still a long way to go.”
• In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org.
