For anyone who is thinking about leaving, wants to leave but is scared or doesn’t know how to do so safely, this prep list is for you. I hope this helps someone out there.

THE QUIET ESCAPE PREP LIST

IF you have the time, start off slowly and deliberately, once you have decided you are ready to leave. Tell him whatever he wants to hear to keep the peace. You need time to prepare and allow him to think that the status quo has been maintained. Caveat: This entire plan goes out the window if you are in danger.

YOUR PRIVACY:

Set up a new email.

1. ⁠NEVER use your home computer for this, all home devices should be considered compromised. Use a library computer, if possible. Family (your own family) and friend’s computers ONLY if a library computer is not accessible.
2. ⁠NEVER auto log in on your phone or have the password saved ANYWHERE. Make the password something he could never guess, but that you would never forget. Examples of passwords: your social security number written out (sevenfivenine, etc.), your childhood best friends home phone number or address, etc.—things he would never know, but that you would never forget. If you have a trusted *safe* person, give them the login and password. Or, write it on a piece of paper and mail it to your P.O. Box (details about that below)
3. ⁠Back the email address up to a work email or school email, NEVER to a personal email you currently have. If you don’t have a work email, ask a trusted friend or family member to use theirs, or you set up two new email accounts and make one the back up of the other.
4. ⁠Send everything from your current email(s) to your new secure email that you want to keep. Ensure to delete your sent box and your trash bin. COVER YOUR TRACKS.
5. ⁠DO NOT use password recovery answers with details of your own life. Choose a character from a movie, actors answers, or obscure answers.
6. ⁠Examples:
7. ⁠First Pet: Jaws
8. ⁠Maiden Name: Cinderella
9. ⁠Birthplace: Jupiter
10. ⁠Get a P.O. Box, pay for it in cash for a year if you can ($155), or at minimum 3 months ($48) and continue to renew it as you get the funds until you have a year paid. Go through EVERYTHING and change your address to this. And I mean everything—DMV, Social Security, Medicaid, EBT, everything. Watch your mail, you will find more than you knew that comes to the home, and you do not want him to have his hands on any important or personal mail that may come in a few months after you’re gone.

➡️If you are imminently leaving, change all of your passwords on everything and back everything up to your new secure email. I cannot stress this enough TRIPLE FUCKING CHECK that you have cleaned up your trail and deleted all emails that reference the password change, sent emails, and that you have emptied your trash bin.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

1. ⁠If he regularly visits your social media pages, start stripping it out. Anything that he could use in a divorce battle, even from years ago, delete it. If it’s a cherished picture memory, send it to the secure email, and delete from everywhere else. Also, go through his social media (anything he has public—do not try to go through his phone in ANY capacity), screenshot or take a photo on your device of damaging things and send to your new secure email address, delete after. Remember to delete your “Recently Deleted” texts as well, if using an iPhone.
2. ⁠Make a list of family members that you know will be watching what you say and do on social media and report it back to your partner—these are not safe people. Put them on a list, title it something innocuous like “Family” so that when you pull the trigger, they all go on limited profile or just be blocked.
3. ⁠Don’t change your back up email to your new one yet, he may see it and discover it exists.
4. ⁠Go through all of your privacy settings on everything. Lock it down. Have a friend try and get around your settings to test it out.

YOUR FINANCES:

You MUST establish your own identity that he cannot touch.

1. ⁠Get a new bank account at a different institution and start socking pennies into it: returned bottles, sold items, bonus checks, birthday money, every penny no matter have small. Keep the bank card off site. It never lives in your wallet or stays in your home. Ally Bank is a good one and it’s online.

2. ⁠You need a credit card in your own name, not one that you have a card on his account or even a joint, you need a clean and clear one for just you. It is also never kept at your home. When you order your credit card, DO NOT have it delivered to your home address. Send it to the P.O. Box you set up, or to a trusted family or friends house.

3. ⁠Set up ALL accounts to go to your new email

4. ⁠Every time you go grocery shopping, add in a gift card for any amount.

5. ⁠Every time you get gas—pay at the register and only get 3/4 of a tank and get a 20.00 gift card

6. Collect redeemable points on everything

7. Stockpile your kitchen in dry goods and freezables

YOUR PHOTOS AND MEMENTOS:

Now is the perfect time to “spring clean.” How much more status quo can it get by you being a proper wife and cleaning up the nest?

1. ⁠Rearrange the house and “declutter”, ship off lots to Goodwill, and the little valuables, box up and take offsite: parents, friend, work. Buy a storage unit if you cannot find another place for storage. Get it out of the house.
2. ⁠Scan your photos and put them on drives, send off site
3. ⁠Keepsake boxes, offsite
4. ⁠Jewelry, offsite
5. ⁠The stupid little things that have no value but you hold precious.
6. ⁠Kids first tooth, stuffy, shoes....off-site

BEING PREPARED FOR AN EMERGENCY EXIT
Sometimes you don’t know when the final blowup will happen and you will want leave with more than the clothes on your back. You want to be able to walk to the garage/car carrying nothing but your phone. You may need those precious seconds to get away.

1. ⁠You need a Go-Bag, one for you and each of your children (f you have them). This is a bag of 2-3 days of clothing, toiletries, toys, formula, prescriptions, and any day to day item you need. This bag stays in the trunk of your car or offsite and is there for if you need it. If you have an offsite stash, then just a days worth of stuff will suffice.
2. ⁠Keep a color photocopy of your Drivers licence, medical insurance, and your children’s birth certificates in this bag. Also keep photos of these in your secret email.
3. ⁠Keep enough cash for a night at a motel, a tank of gas or a meal in the bag, or all 3, if possible.
4. ⁠Phone charger lives in your car and never leaves. Keep a wall plug in the bag.
5. ⁠If these are found, this is easy to explain. It’s a good idea to be prepared for an emergency, what would happen if your phone died and you were stuck on the side of the road? (I keep a similar bag in my car, especially when I was a nanny, and it’s actually saved my butt a couple of times: coffee spilled on me at work or got puked on by a baby, forgot my wallet and needed gas, running late and forgot my meds, etc.)
6. If your car is in the garage, keep the spare key under the seat or use a magnet or duct tape to attach it somewhere else that he wouldn’t ever think to look, i.e. in the Christmas decorations bin, behind a storage shelving unit, inside the pole of a shoe caddy.