The clauses that decide what happens when things go wrong

Nobody reads every word of a lease or a gym agreement. But a handful of clauses decide nearly everything if the deal goes bad: how you cancel, what happens to your deposit, who pays for repairs, whether you can sue or must go to arbitration, and when it renews on its own.

This section explains those clauses for the contracts people sign most: apartment leases, car purchases, memberships, subscriptions, home repair and service agreements, and employment paperwork. We point out what's usually negotiable, what's usually not, and which consumer protection laws may apply regardless of what the contract says.

Contract law varies by state and by country. We'll flag that each time, and we'll say when a contract is significant enough that paying a lawyer to review it is money well spent.