Provisions people wish their divorce decree had covered
Once a decree is signed and entered, adding something it never mentioned usually means going back to court. These are the provisions people most often regret leaving out.
The decree is the document you will live with for years. It is also the point at which the process stops being negotiable: once it is signed and entered by the court, adding something the papers never mentioned usually means filing a motion and going back in front of a judge.
Almost everything below is easy to include while terms are still being shaped, and difficult or impossible to add afterward. That asymmetry is the whole reason to read this early rather than at signing.
Most of these will already be on your attorney's radar. This is not a list for second-guessing them. It is so you can follow the conversation and make sure the ones that matter to your situation actually get discussed. If you are drafting without a lawyer, it matters double, because template agreements are exactly where these gaps hide.
Not all of it will apply to you. Skip freely. If a term here is unfamiliar, the glossary covers the vocabulary in plain language.
Money and support
Life insurance securing support. Spousal support usually ends when the paying spouse dies, and in many states child support does too, though some states allow unpaid support to be claimed against the estate. Do not rely on that. A policy naming you as beneficiary, with proof-of-coverage requirements, is the standard fix, but only if the decree actually requires it.
Support terms, completely. Not just the amount. The duration, the payment mechanics, and exactly what ends or changes support: remarriage, cohabitation, income changes. Most states let you agree in writing to your own rules for these, so they are terms to negotiate rather than defaults to accept. Vague terms invite relitigating.
Retirement division mechanics. "Split the 401(k)" is not enough. Dividing most workplace retirement accounts takes a QDRO, a Qualified Domestic Relations Order: a separate court order, drawn up after the decree, that tells the plan administrator how to split the account without the transfer being treated as an early withdrawal and taxed like one. The decree by itself does not do this. So the decree needs to say who drafts the QDRO, by when, and who pays for it. Undrafted QDROs sit for years, and people find out at retirement. A QDRO does not cover IRAs, or federal, military, and most state government plans, which are divided by their own kinds of order. Make sure the decree names the right one for each account.
Debt allocation with indemnification. Creditors are not bound by your decree. "They took the card debt" will not stop collectors coming to you, because your name is still on the account. What protects you is an indemnification clause: a promise that if you end up paying a debt they agreed to take, they owe you back. Add deadlines to close or refinance every joint account.
Past joint tax returns. Who pays if an old joint return gets audited or a balance surfaces, and how the transition year gets filed. A silent decree leaves both of you fully on the hook.
Transfer deadlines with teeth. Actual dates by which accounts, vehicles, and titles move. Not "promptly."
Assets discovered later. A settlement divides what you know about. An omitted-asset clause, saying anything found afterward gets divided by an agreed rule, turns a future discovery into arithmetic instead of a new court case.
House and property
Buyout or sale mechanics, exactly. The trigger date, how the price gets set, who picks the agent, and what happens if buyout financing falls through. "We will sell eventually" is a fight scheduled for later.
Refinance deadline with a remedy. The classic failure: your name stays on their mortgage for years, holding your credit hostage. Set a deadline, and a forced-sale remedy if refinancing does not happen.
Interim carrying costs and deed transfer. Who pays the mortgage, taxes, and repairs until the transfer happens, and the deadline for signing the deed.
Children
Who claims the children on taxes. Which parent, which years, and critically a requirement that the custodial parent sign IRS Form 8332 for each year they are giving up the claim. The IRS will not accept pages from a divorce decree in its place, so a decree that assigns the years but never mentions Form 8332 gives the other parent nothing the IRS will honor. Missed constantly, and the IRS does not referee.
College and post-18 costs. Base child support usually runs past 18 on its own: most states continue it to high school graduation or age 19, and some further. College is the gap: in many states a court cannot order either parent to contribute to college unless they agreed to it. Other states let a parent ask for it later even when the decree says nothing, though usually only until the child reaches a certain age, and that window can close before anyone files. Do not count on a silent decree settling the question either way. Define contributions and caps, and who owns and controls any 529 college savings account, since the owner controls the money regardless of whose name the account is for.
Children's health insurance and uncovered costs. Who carries the policy, and how out-of-pocket costs get split: orthodontia, therapy, glasses.
Childcare and activity costs beyond base support. The recurring argument that base support does not settle.
Schedule specifics, incorporated. Holidays, travel consent, relocation notice, and right of first refusal, meaning whether a parent who cannot cover their own parenting time has to offer it to the other parent before arranging a sitter. "Reasonable visitation" is where conflict lives.
A required communication platform. A designated co-parenting app with timestamped messages. Disputes about who said what stop existing.
Exchange rules with consequences. Where and how exchanges happen, a grace period, and what follows a no-show: forfeiture of that visit, and makeup time rules.
Wording and enforcement
(If a decree already exists and is being ignored, enforcing it is a separate process with its own vocabulary.)
Mandatory language: "shall," not "should." Courts enforce obligations, not aspirations. "Should," "may," and "will try" can put a provision out of reach of contempt, leaving you a slower route back through a clarifying order. That route is not open forever either: some states put a deadline on it, two years after the decree in Texas, so a vague provision can end up with no remedy at all. It is worth an explicit pass over the whole draft looking for them.
No "mutually agree" without a fallback. Every "as the parties mutually agree" needs a tiebreaker: a written request, a response window, and silence counting as consent, or a named decision path. Otherwise one person can veto by not answering.
Your own health coverage. If you are covered by your spouse's employer plan, the divorce ends that. If they already dropped you from the plan while the divorce was pending, you keep this right anyway. COBRA can let you stay on the same plan for up to 36 months at your own expense, but only if the employer has 20 or more employees, and only if you tell the plan administrator about the divorce within 60 days. The plan does not find out on its own. Miss that notice and the right is gone permanently; only after you give it does your 60 days to elect begin. If you are already past 60 days from the decree, send it anyway. The clock can start later than the decree, from the day your coverage actually stopped or the day the plan told you this was your job. Expect to pay up to 102% of the full premium, and compare that against a marketplace plan before electing. If the employer is smaller than 20, ask about your state's smaller-employer equivalent, and send the notice regardless: the 20-employee test looks at last year's headcount, not today's, so a company that is small now may still owe you COBRA. Who pays those premiums is negotiable, if somebody raises it.
Enforcement teeth. Attorney-fee shifting when someone has to go back to court to enforce the decree. Without it, enforcing your own judgment costs you money.
Name restoration in the decree itself. Usually free inside the decree, and simplest there. Some states will still restore a former name through the divorce case afterward, often at no extra fee, while others send a late request to a separate petition. Only if you want it.
Personal property, specifically. The things you actually care about, named in writing: pets, photo libraries, airline miles, digital accounts. Not "divided amicably."
The part a web page cannot do
Two things determine whether this list is useful to you, and neither of them is the list.
The first is which items apply to your situation. Whether you own a home, whether you have children, whether you are represented or drafting alone: each changes what matters and what is safe to skip. Reading twenty-three provisions and guessing is not the same as knowing which seven are yours.
The second is timing. This is only valuable before the terms are settled. Found afterward, it is a list of regrets.
Divorcery does both. It surfaces this while your agreement is still being negotiated, filtered to your circumstances, with the relevant topics ready to send to your attorney before your next conversation. That is the difference between reading a good list and using one.
These provisions are general, and what a decree can or must contain varies by state. Raise them with a licensed family-law attorney in your state, who knows your case as this page cannot.