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On April 16, former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife, Cerina Wanzer Fairfax, before taking his own life amid a divorce. Just three days later in Louisiana, a father murdered multiple children of his own and gravely injured both their mother and his estranged wife before turning the gun on himself. He was also going through a divorce.

These cases are often framed as shocking, unthinkable tragedies—aberrations no one could have predicted. But I have spent more than two decades representing victims of domestic violence in family courts. I have sat across from women who were deeply afraid, and I have watched as their fears were minimized, explained away, or ignored by the very systems meant to protect them. Over and over, I have seen the same warning signs: coercive control, separation, threats, access to weapons, mental instability.

These tragedies are not unpredictable. They are patterned—and they are preventable. We recognize the risk. We simply fail to act on it. This is because our institutions do not believe women when they express legitimate fear, and the consequences are catastrophic.

I say women because domestic violence is a gender-based crime, and it predominantly affects women. One in three women in........

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