Spivack, Carla2011-11-162011-11-16201190 Or. L. Rev. 247 (2011)0196-2043https://hdl.handle.net/1794/1175956 pagesPick your statistic: in the United States, every nine seconds a woman is physically abused. The Department of Justice concluded that between 1998 and 2002, of the almost 3.5 million violent crimes committed against family members, forty-nine percent of these were crimes against spouses. In a 1995–1996 study conducted in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, nearly 25% of women and 7.6% of men were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or dating partner/acquaintance at some time in their lifetime (based on a survey of 16,000 participants, equally male and female). Despite a dramatic increase in awareness over the past twenty years, the problem seems intractable.en-USInheritance and successionSpousal abuseArticle