Lease Clauses Alabama Landlords Can’t Enforce: A UA Student Guide (2026)

Lease Clauses Alabama Landlords Cannot Enforce

A student lease near campus runs eight to fourteen pages, arrives as a PDF with a signing deadline, and gets signed in about four minutes. Somewhere in the middle is a paragraph saying that if the complex ever has to hire a lawyer over your account, you pay their legal bill.

Under Alabama law, that clause is unenforceable. So are several others that show up routinely in leases in this market. Knowing which ones are void does not get you out of your lease — but it changes what you should agree to pay when a leasing office sends a demand letter.

The Four Things a Lease May Not Do

Alabama Code § 35-9A-163(a) is short and unusually blunt. In the statute’s own words, “a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant”:

Each of those maps onto a clause you have probably already signed.

1. You cannot sign away repair rights or deposit protections

Sections 35-9A-204, 401 and 404 are the habitability and repair provisions — the landlord’s duty to keep the place habitable, your remedy when they do not, and the rules on heat, water and other essential services. A lease cannot make you give those up. Neither can it rewrite the security deposit rules in § 35-9A-201. If your lease says the deposit is “non-refundable,” or that you forfeit it automatically on early move-out, that language is running directly at a statute it is not allowed to touch.

There is one narrow, real exception on repairs, and it is worth knowing so you do not misread it. Section 35-9A-204(d) does let a landlord and tenant agree that the tenant will perform specified repairs or maintenance — but only if the agreement is “set forth in a separate writing signed by the parties and supported by adequate consideration,” only if the work is not needed to cure a building-code violation materially affecting health and safety, and only if it does not affect the landlord’s duties to other tenants. Subsection (e) adds that the landlord “may not treat performance of the separate agreement” as a condition of the rental agreement. A maintenance-shifting paragraph buried in the standard lease is not a separate signed writing supported by consideration.

2. Confession of judgment

A confession-of-judgment clause lets the landlord obtain a judgment against you without you appearing or defending. It is flatly prohibited. This one is rare in modern Tuscaloosa student leases, but it still surfaces in older private-landlord forms and in house rentals passed down between tenants.

3. The landlord’s attorney’s fees — and the asymmetry

This is the clause students actually get hurt by. Complexes routinely include “tenant shall pay all attorney’s fees and costs of collection.” Section 35-9A-163(a)(3) says a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant “agrees to pay the landlord’s attorney’s fees or cost of collection.” Full stop.

The asymmetry runs the other way and is worth sitting with: § 35-9A-401(b) lets a tenant whose landlord has failed to comply “recover actual damages and reasonable attorney fees and obtain injunctive relief.” The Act gives the tenant a fee remedy and denies the landlord a contractual one. That is a deliberate design choice, not an accident, and it is why a collections letter itemizing “attorney fees” against a former resident deserves a hard look before anyone pays it.

4. Exculpation and indemnity

“The landlord is not liable for any injury, loss, or damage” and “resident agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the owner” are near-universal in this market. Under § 35-9A-163(a)(4), a lease may not require the tenant to agree to the exculpation or limitation of the landlord’s liability arising under law, or to indemnify the landlord for it. That does not mean the landlord is automatically liable for everything — it means the lease cannot be the reason they are not. You still want renters insurance, because the statute governs the landlord’s liability, not your stolen laptop.

What Happens to a Prohibited Clause

Subsection (b) does two things. First: “A provision prohibited by subsection (a) included in a rental agreement is unenforceable.” The clause is dead where it sits; the rest of the lease survives.

Second, there is a penalty with teeth. “If a landlord seeks to enforce a provision in a rental agreement containing provisions known by the landlord to be prohibited, the tenant may recover in addition to actual damages an amount up to one month’s periodic rent and reasonable attorney’s fees.” Note the trigger — the landlord has to seek to enforce a provision they knew was prohibited. Merely printing it in the form is not the same as suing on it. Whether a given demand letter crosses that line is a question for a lawyer looking at your documents.

Three More Limits That Are Not in § 35-9A-163

The prohibited-provisions list is not the whole story. Three other sections quietly override lease language.

• 01They cannot seize your stuff. Section 35-9A-425 states that a landlord’s lien or security interest in the tenant’s household goods “is not enforceable unless perfected before January 1, 2007,” and that “distraint for rent is abolished.” A lease clause claiming a lien on your belongings for unpaid rent is claiming something Alabama did away with.
• 02Unconscionable terms can be struck. Under § 35-9A-143, if a court finds a rental agreement or any provision was unconscionable when made, it may refuse to enforce the agreement, enforce the rest without that provision, or limit the provision to avoid an unconscionable result. This is a court’s judgment call, not a bright line — but it is a second route past a term that is not on the § 35-9A-163 list.
• 03Retaliation is prohibited. Section 35-9A-501 bars a landlord from retaliating “by discriminatorily increasing rent or decreasing services or by bringing or threatening to bring an action for possession” because a tenant complained about code violations or landlord violations, or organized a tenants’ union. Subsection (c) preserves the landlord’s ability to act for legitimate reasons, including nonpayment of rent.

What the Act Does Not Say

Being straight about the gaps matters more than listing wins.

Late fees are not addressed. Chapter 9A does not cap late fees or set a grace period. Section 35-9A-161(a) permits parties to include “terms and conditions not prohibited by this chapter or other law, including rent, term of the agreement, and other provisions.” A punitive late fee might be attacked as unconscionable under § 35-9A-143, but there is no statutory number to point at. Read that clause before signing, because there is no backstop.

There is no repair-and-deduct remedy. Many states let a tenant fix a small problem and subtract it from rent. Alabama’s Act does not, and it gives no general right to withhold rent while a repair is outstanding. Do not take this advice from a group chat.

Not every arrangement is covered. Section 35-9A-122 excludes several arrangements from the chapter, including residence at an institution incidental to educational or similar services, and occupancy by a member of a fraternal or social organization in a structure the organization operates. Private off-campus apartments and houses are squarely within the Act. A room in a chapter house, or university-operated on-campus housing, may not be — and how those exclusions apply to a specific building is not something to settle from a blog post.

What to Do With This Before You Sign

None of this is a reason to sign carelessly on the theory that bad clauses will be struck later. Unenforceable is a thing you prove after a fight, not a thing that stops the fight. Read the lease.

Work through our Tuscaloosa student lease guide and our comparison of furnished versus unfurnished student apartments before you sign anything. Pay particular attention to the joint-and-several liability clause if you are matched with roommates you did not choose, to the guarantor paragraph your parents will sign, and to the sublet clause if there is any chance you will need to sublease over the summer or get out early.

Ask for a copy of the full lease before the deposit is due, not after. A leasing office that will not send the document until you have paid is a signal worth taking seriously — see our guide to avoiding rental scams in Tuscaloosa. And when you compare properties on our guide to apartments near UA, read the negative reviews for how the office behaves at move-out, which is when these clauses actually get used.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Rest of the Alabama Tenant-Law Series

This guide is one part of our plain-language series on the Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (Alabama Code Title 35, Chapter 9A) for University of Alabama students. The rest of the series:

• 01Security deposit limits and the 60-day rule — What a landlord may charge, what may be deducted, and the deadline for returning the balance.
• 02What your landlord must repair — The duty to maintain the premises under § 35-9A-204, and what to do when a ticket goes unanswered.
• 03When your landlord may enter — The two-day notice rule in § 35-9A-303, and the situations that do not require notice at all.
• 04Retaliation for complaining — Which complaints § 35-9A-501 protects, and the four exceptions that end most claims.
• 05Late rent and the seven-day notice — How Alabama’s seven-day notice to pay or quit works, and where the eviction timeline actually starts.
• 06Lockouts and seized belongings — Why self-help eviction is unlawful in Alabama, and what § 35-9A-407 lets a tenant recover.
• 07Leaving the apartment empty for a semester or summer — The 14-day absence notice in § 35-9A-423, and the seven-day electric rule that makes a unit “abandoned.”