Prenup clauses fall into three groups: the core terms nearly every agreement includes, the ones couples add for their own situation, and the ones courts will not enforce. A plain-English look at each, per the Uniform Law Commission's model act.
If you are looking into a prenup, the question underneath the research is usually pretty simple: what am I agreeing to? Not the legal theory, not the worst-case scenarios, but the specific terms that go on the page. The good news is that most prenups are less mysterious than they look. They are built from a shared set of building blocks, and once you know what those blocks are, the whole document becomes readable.
That shared structure is not an accident. The Uniform Premarital Agreement Act, promulgated by the Uniform Law Commission in 1983, lays out an illustrative list of matters a premarital agreement can cover, and twenty-nine states plus D.C. have adopted that act or its successor. So when we talk about "typical" terms, we are describing a genuine pattern, not a guess. Let's walk through it clause by clause.
What counts as a "typical" prenup, anyway?
The word "typical" matters here, because couples sometimes imagine a prenup as an exotic, custom-built legal instrument. Most are not. Most are assembled from the same core clauses, arranged to fit one couple's situation.
Under the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act, an agreement must be in writing and signed by both parties. That formality is the baseline everywhere, though individual states layer on their own requirements like notarization or acknowledgment. Beyond that, the substance tends to cluster around a familiar set of topics: what each person keeps as their own, what the couple treats as shared, how debt is handled, whether support is paid, and what happens to an estate. If you want a companion way to think about the assets going into all of this, our guide to what a prenup protects walks through the inventory side of the process.
What are the most common prenup clauses?
Most prenups are built from separate-property clauses, marital-property and income clauses, debt allocation, spousal-support terms, and estate or inheritance provisions. A clause is one numbered section of the agreement; a term is what that section decides. This guide uses the two words interchangeably, the way couples do when they read a draft. That five-part spine covers the questions a court would otherwise answer for you under your state's default rules. A prenup lets you answer them yourselves, in advance, with full information.
Here is the standard inventory at a glance, along with what each clause does and the options couples typically weigh.
| Clause |
What it does |
Typical options |
| Separate property |
Keeps assets with the party who originally receives them. Default for gifts and inheritances |
List each item; specify that appreciation stays separate |
| Marital or community property |
Defines what the couple acquires together and how it is treated |
Pool income vs. keep separate; how to split shared property |
| Debt allocation |
Assigns responsibility for existing and future debts |
Keep each partner's debt separate; share certain debts |
| Alimony |
Addresses whether support is paid if the marriage ends |
Full waiver, capped amount, or defined amount and duration |
| Estate and inheritance |
Addresses what a surviving spouse can claim and how separate property passes |
Waive or preserve elective share; protect family assets |
| Financial management during marriage |
Sets how money is handled while married |
Joint account, separate accounts, or a mix |
None of these clauses is exotic. Each one answers a practical question a couple would rather settle calmly now than argue about later. The rest of this post takes the ones that carry the most weight and explains what they do for a real couple.
If you want to see where each clause sits on the page, our section-by-section example of what a prenup looks like shows the order the terms usually appear in, from the recitals at the top to the governing-law clause and signatures at the end.
What does the separate-property clause do?
The separate-property clause is the most common clause in a prenup, and it usually serves as the anchor the rest of the agreement builds on. It lists the assets each partner owned before the marriage, plus gifts and inheritances they receive during it, and states that those assets stay that partner's alone.
Why does this clause do so much heavy lifting? Because without it, the line between "yours" and "ours" can blur over the course of a marriage. Say you inherit money and deposit it into a joint account you both use for household expenses. That is commingling (mixing separate property with joint funds), and over time a court may treat the commingled money as shared marital property. A separate-property clause, paired with careful record-keeping, is designed to keep that from happening by naming the asset and stating clearly that it remains separate.
A well-drafted separate-property clause often goes one level deeper and addresses appreciation: if a premarital investment or a family business grows in value during the marriage, the clause can specify that the growth stays separate too. This is where couples with a business, real estate, or investment accounts tend to spend the most time. If this is the clause that matters most for you, our deep dive on the separate-property clause covers the details.
How do prenups handle debt and spousal support?
Two of the most practical clauses in a typical prenup deal with debt and support. They tend to matter to couples for different reasons, but both come down to the same idea: deciding in advance who is responsible for what.
Start with debt. The debt-allocation clause assigns responsibility for existing and future obligations. Many couples use it to keep each partner's premarital debt separate, so that one person's student loans or credit-card balance does not become the other's problem if the marriage ends. Couples can also agree to share certain debts, like a mortgage on a home they buy together. If one of you is bringing significant debt into the marriage, our guide to prenups when one partner has debt covers how couples typically designate that debt as one partner's responsibility.
Spousal support (often called alimony) is the other big one. Terms here range across a spectrum: some couples waive support entirely, some cap it at a set amount, and some define a specific amount and duration tied to the length of the marriage. States limit how far a waiver can go. A court may decline to enforce a support waiver that would leave one spouse dependent on public assistance, a limit codified in state versions of the model act such as Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 123A. Some states also require that each partner have independent counsel before a support waiver will hold up.
That last point matters for how you approach this clause. A spousal-support waiver is not a simple form field you check off. It often needs to be worked through with an attorney, both because the rules vary and because the stakes are high. Our overview of how spousal support works explains the range of options in plain language before you sit down to decide.
Prenup clauses couples overlook
The five core clauses above answer the questions a court would otherwise answer for you. The clauses below answer a different one: what happens when life changes after you sign? A move, a milestone anniversary, a death, a new loan, a first child. You will not miss these terms until one of those changes arrives, and by then the agreement is already signed.
Choice-of-law clause: which state's law governs if you move
A choice-of-law clause names the state whose law will be used to interpret and enforce the agreement. It is usually one sentence near the end of the document, and the choice of law governing the agreement is one of the matters the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act lists as fair game for a prenup. Couples skip it because they are thinking about the state they live in now. The clause exists for the state they live in later.
If you sign in Nevada and, eight years on, divorce in New York, a New York court will generally start from its own rules unless the agreement says otherwise. A choice-of-law clause asks that court to apply Nevada law to the agreement instead, so the terms you negotiated stay attached to the law you negotiated them under. The clause does not override everything: a court can still decline to apply another state's law where doing so would conflict with a fundamental policy of its own state. Our guide on whether it matters where you sign your prenup walks through how an agreement travels, and our state-by-state prenup pages list what each state requires.
Sunset clause: the prenup expires or changes after a set number of years
A sunset clause makes the agreement, or specific parts of it, expire after a set number of years or at a triggering event, such as the birth of a child or a milestone anniversary. Without one, a prenup has no shelf life of its own. It lasts until divorce, death, a written revocation signed by both of you, or a court setting it aside. The ten-year expiration you may have heard about is a myth, and our post on whether prenups expire explains where it came from.
Couples use sunset clauses in two ways. Some let the whole agreement lapse after a long marriage, on the theory that two financial lives have merged by then. Others sunset only the terms that feel harshest early on: a spousal-support waiver that falls away after ten years, or a step-up schedule that increases support with each year of marriage, while the separate-property clause stays in place for good. One caution: a sunset clause that erases separate-property protection can defeat the reason you wanted a prenup in the first place, so decide clause by clause what should expire and say so in the agreement.
Review or amendment clause
A review clause commits both of you to revisit the agreement at set milestones: every five years, after a child, after one of you starts a business. It is a promise to talk, written into the document, and nothing more. The clause does not change any term by itself. Under the model act, a prenup can be amended or revoked after the wedding only by a written agreement signed by both spouses, so any change the review produces has to be put in writing and signed, with the same full disclosure the original required.
Why include a promise to talk if it has no legal teeth? Because the alternative is a document nobody reopens until it is needed, which is the worst moment to discover it describes a life you no longer lead. Our post on whether a prenup is a living document covers what an amendment looks like in practice and how it differs from a postnup.
Death and estate clause: what happens on death rather than divorce
Most couples read a prenup as a divorce document, but it also governs what happens if one of you dies while married, and for a marriage that lasts, that is the ending the agreement will meet. An estate clause addresses what the surviving spouse can claim from the other's estate. In many states a surviving spouse has a right to a minimum share of that estate (the elective share) regardless of what a will says, and a prenup is the usual way to waive or adjust that right in advance.
The clause works only when it is coordinated with a will. A prenup can keep an inheritance or a business separate and can waive the elective share, but it does not distribute anything. Your will, trust, and beneficiary designations do that, and beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance pass outside the will altogether. A prenup drafted with one plan in mind, next to a will that was never updated to match, leaves gaps that state intestacy rules end up filling. Estate-rights waivers are also among the terms First flags for independent attorney involvement. Our guide to how a prenup works with your will, trust, and beneficiaries walks through the pairing, and if either of you has children from an earlier relationship, our post on prenups with kids from a previous relationship covers how the estate clause protects their inheritance.
Debt allocation clause for debt taken on during the marriage
The debt clause in most prenups handles the easy half: the student loans and credit-card balances each of you brings in stay with the person who brought them. The overlooked half is debt taken on after the wedding: a credit card opened in one name, a car loan, a business line of credit, a graduate degree one of you starts in year three. Without a clause that speaks to marital debt, your state's default rules decide who owes what, and in a community-property state that can mean sharing a debt you never signed for.
A marital-debt clause sets the rule in advance: debts either of you opens individually during the marriage stay with the person who opened them unless you agree otherwise in writing, and debts you take on together, like a mortgage, are shared. The clause binds the two of you, not your lenders. If you co-signed a loan, the lender can still collect from you regardless of what the prenup says; the clause decides who reimburses whom afterward. Our post on prenups, debt, and who owes what goes through the clause line by line.
A clause for couples planning children
Start with what a prenup cannot do, because this is where the misunderstanding usually sits: child custody and child support cannot be set in a prenup. Courts decide both at the time, based on the child's best interests and the parents' circumstances then, and a clause that tries to fix either in advance will not be enforced.
What a prenup can do is plan the finances around a child. If one of you expects to step back from work, the spousal-support clause can account for it: a waiver that lifts once a child is born, support that scales with years out of the workforce, or a lump sum tied to a career pause. The marital-property clause can treat the family home or a 529 college-savings account as shared no matter whose income funded it, and a sunset or review clause can be triggered by a birth. None of this touches custody or support. It shapes the financial ground the two of you stand on as parents.
Prenup clauses courts will not enforce
Not every clause a couple wants to include will hold up. This is where the financial clauses part ways with what are sometimes called lifestyle or infidelity clauses: terms that try to govern personal conduct rather than property.
Child custody and child support
Child custody and child support are the category of terms a prenup cannot decide at all. Courts determine those based on the child's best interests at the time of a divorce, regardless of what an agreement says, a principle reflected in American Bar Association guidance on family law. If you find a template that promises to lock in a custody arrangement, that is a sign to be skeptical. Our post on whether lifestyle clauses in prenups are enforceable goes deeper on where the line falls.
Anything illegal or against public policy
A prenup is a contract, and a contract cannot require something the law forbids. A clause that would have one spouse commit a crime, waive a right the state does not let people waive, or leave one spouse dependent on public assistance will not survive review, however clearly it is written. The public-assistance limit on support waivers described earlier in this post is the clearest example: it is written into state codifications of the model act, and a court applies it even when both partners signed knowingly. Courts also keep a general power to set aside terms that were unconscionable (so one-sided that no reasonable person would agree to them) when signed, and in some states at the time of enforcement.
Lifestyle and infidelity clauses in most states
Lifestyle clauses can cover almost anything a couple imagines. Weight ranges, social-media rules, how often the in-laws visit, penalties for cheating. Couples sometimes add them to set expectations, and there is nothing wrong with talking through those expectations together. The legal reality is that courts often decline to enforce these terms, because many states view personal-conduct provisions as against public policy. The financial clauses in a prenup carry real legal weight; the lifestyle clauses carry far less, and often none.
Infidelity clauses deserve their own mention. An infidelity clause changes the financial outcome of a divorce if one spouse cheats: a lump-sum penalty, a larger share of marital property for the faithful spouse, or support that switches on. Most states follow a no-fault divorce framework, where neither spouse has to prove wrongdoing to end the marriage, and a clause that punishes cheating reintroduces fault through the back door. Courts in those states often decline to enforce it on public-policy grounds, and proving the trigger can be its own obstacle. Our guide to infidelity clauses in prenups explains the forms they take and why they rarely hold up, and our post on whether a prenup can have a cheating clause uses California's rules to show the two hurdles a penalty has to clear.
Two narrower conduct clauses sit on firmer footing than a cheating penalty, though neither is a sure thing. A confidentiality clause that restricts both partners from sharing financial details with third parties is enforced as an ordinary contract term, and financial confidentiality tends to hold up better than language that polices what a spouse may say publicly. A social-media clause is judged the same way: a narrow, specific clause with a proportionate penalty stands a better chance than a broad ban on anything negative. Our posts on confidentiality and privacy clauses in a prenup and prenup social media clauses cover how courts weigh each one.
The clause that protects all the others: full financial disclosure
One clause that does carry weight, and that nearly every valid agreement includes, is full financial disclosure. Both partners typically attach schedules of their assets, debts, income, and expected inheritances. Incomplete disclosure is one of the most common reasons a court sets a prenup aside, so this step is part of almost every enforceable agreement. Our explainer on why full financial disclosure matters walks through what goes on those schedules.
Do typical terms change from state to state?
The clauses themselves are remarkably consistent from one state to the next, which is what the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act was designed to accomplish. What terms hold up, though, depends on state law and proper procedure, not the wording of a clause alone.
Two things vary. First, the procedural rules. Some states require a waiting period between when the final draft is delivered and when it is signed; others require notarization or independent legal counsel for certain waivers. These are the kinds of requirements that decide whether an otherwise sound agreement survives a challenge. Second, the substantive limits. State codifications of the model act, like Nevada's Chapter 123A, spell out both what parties may contract over and where the law draws the line, such as the public-assistance exception to support waivers.
If you live in one of the many equitable-distribution states rather than a community-property state, it helps to know that "equitable" does not always mean "equal." Courts in those states divide marital property fairly based on a range of factors, and a prenup is one way to define what "fair" looks like for your situation before the question ever reaches a judge. The practical takeaway: confirm your state's specific requirements on our state-by-state prenup pages, because the same clause can be enforceable in one state and vulnerable in another depending on how the process was handled.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most common prenup clauses?
Most prenups include a separate-property clause, a marital-property clause, a debt-allocation clause, a spousal-support clause, and estate or inheritance provisions. These handle who keeps what they brought in, how shared assets and debts are split, whether support is paid, and what a surviving spouse can claim.
What is a separate-property clause?
A separate-property clause lists the assets each partner owned before the marriage, plus gifts and inheritances received during it, and states that those assets stay that partner's alone. It is usually the anchor of a prenup because it keeps premarital property from becoming divisible marital property.
Can a prenup waive spousal support?
Many prenups address spousal support, and couples can waive it, cap it, or set a defined amount and duration. Rules vary by state, and a court may decline to enforce a waiver that would leave one spouse dependent on public assistance. Some states also require independent counsel for a support waiver.
Are lifestyle or infidelity clauses typical?
Some couples add lifestyle or infidelity clauses, but courts often decline to enforce them because they view many personal-conduct terms as against public policy. They can help set expectations, but they carry far less legal weight than the financial clauses in an agreement.
Can a prenup decide child custody or child support?
No. A prenup cannot pre-decide child custody or child support. Courts determine those based on the child's best interests at the time of a divorce, regardless of what an agreement says.
Does full financial disclosure need to be part of a prenup?
Yes. Both partners typically attach full schedules of their assets, debts, income, and expected inheritances. Incomplete disclosure is one of the most common reasons a court sets a prenup aside, so the disclosure step is part of nearly every valid agreement.
What is the most overlooked clause in a prenup?
The choice-of-law clause is the strongest candidate. It takes one sentence, it names which state's law governs the agreement if you move, and couples leave it out because they are thinking about where they live now rather than where they might one day divorce. Close behind are the death and estate clause, which has to be coordinated with a will to work, and a clause for debt taken on during the marriage.
Can a prenup include a sunset clause?
Yes. A sunset clause makes the whole agreement, or specific terms in it, expire after a set number of years or at a trigger like the birth of a child. One approach is to sunset only the spousal-support terms and keep the separate-property clause in place for the life of the marriage. Without a sunset clause, a prenup lasts until divorce, death, a written revocation, or a court setting it aside.
Can you put an infidelity clause in a prenup?
You can write one in, but in most states it is unlikely to be enforced. Most states use no-fault divorce, and a financial penalty for cheating reintroduces fault, which courts often treat as against public policy. Proving the trigger is a second obstacle. Our post on whether a prenup can have a cheating clause walks through both.
Building your own agreement with First
Once you see the pattern, a prenup stops feeling like a wall of legal text. Most agreements come down to a familiar set of clauses you can work through one at a time: what each of you keeps, what you share, how debt is handled, whether support is paid, and what happens to an estate. Take them in order and the whole document becomes a series of clear conversations rather than one intimidating one.
First lets couples build these terms together in plain language, one clause at a time, with the option to add independent attorney involvement for terms like support waivers and estate-rights waivers that need it. No PDFs, no hourly billing surprises, no back and forth with attorneys before you have even talked it through together. If you are ready to start the conversation, see how First works and take the clauses one at a time.
