Nope. All 50 states have criminalized spousal rape. Anyway, a contract for sex would be void as being against public policy.
Au contraire. Sex within marriage is not frowned upon by the State. Indeed, procreation within marriage is encouraged (to the point where some states in the past sought -unconstitutionally, as it turned out- to prohibit the use of contraceptives).
How is the wife being forced to have sex? She is voluntarily entering into a contract to have sex. She is giving her consent, in advance (and in writing, no less) to having sex. Consent undermines a rape charge.
Now, can she withdraw that consent at some future time? Sure. But she will be guilty of a breach of contract, and subject to contractual penalties. If she withdraws her consent and the husband forces himself on her anyway, is he guilty of spousal rape? Absolutely.
It is not “free” labor. The prospective wife is getting something in return: the prospective groom’s agreement to marry her, along with the bundle of property rights that marriage will create.
Besides which, she is not being “forced” to perform the labor. She is voluntarily entering into a contract to perform the labor.
She can still choose not to perform the labor at some future point, but she will be subject to a claim that she has breached her contract.
The clause is tantamount to an employment contract. (Which is why I wondered aloud whether wage and hour laws would be implicated.)
I, uh, don’t suppose you have a cite for any of that?
I think you’ll find a contractual term cannot usurp the law of the land…it would be nice at times, but nah.
It’s a difficult question to respond to because, as people have pointed out, it doesn’t make sense to be talking about a pre-nup, but you do have a point, spoke. If a court would consider the marriage as consideration (I’m not sure about that), you could consider it as a labor contract. Still, you couldn’t force her to perform because specific performance is not allowed for labor contracts, since it would be akin to slavery. I still don’t see how a court could except a contract for sex under any circumstances, considering prostitution is illegal. The same reasons why surrogacy contracts have been ruled void as against public policy could apply. “Public policy” leaves a lot of discretion.
Now that women are no longer considered the legal property of men, how can a court justify a fault-based divorce for failure to provide sex? Exactly how often would she have to perform? I’m going to have to ask for a cite.
Quick note -
cher3 and chula -
sorry for the mis-information (my bad 
), and thanks for the update.
in an attempt to further state what used to be:
in jurisdictions where a cause needed to be established for divorce, (what the hell is/was the state doing getting involved in THAT issue?! (leftovers from the RCC thinking, I suspect)), was not refusal to consent to sex considered grounds for divorce, under the old catch-all, “incompatibility”?
I don’t think you’ll find any cites for this subject, because I doubt something like this has been brought before a court.
You might want to think of it this way – marriage itself is in part a kind of contract. It imposes a myriad of legal obligations on both parties. Furthermore, withholding sex is a grounds for fault divorce. Therefore, marriage itself is a contract whose terms require both parties to have sex with each other.
The ‘wifely duties’ clause will go right next to the ‘husbandly duties’ clause… something about ‘taking the garbage out’, wasn’t it? 
adam, in those cases (no ‘vows’), how you define your relationship is up to you.
IIRC, you legally don’t have to have vows in a religious service or a non-religous ceremony or marriage - you only must identify who you are, and that you willingly agree to marry the other person (indicating that you know who they are, too). That’s it. (“I, My Name, take you, Your Name, as spouse.”) Vows are a personal aspect, added by many traditions, but not strictly necessary.
If you skip them, then you skip them, and you work all parts of the relationship out as you go. I’ve way less concern with that direction than with specifying too much.
Sounds almost right. When I got married, I had to apply for a marriage license with my fiancé, stating that we intended to get married (and that we were both eligible to be married, i.e. of age, not married to someone else). At that point, we received a marriage license.
Once we two single people had the marriage license, we had a certain number of days to meet with a person capable of performing a marriage and two witnesses, and have some sort of ceremony. The license had to be signed by the officiant, affirming that they had performed the ceremony, and by the witnesses, affirming that they had witnessed the ceremony.
The minister that married us gave us a fairly wide choice of ceremonies, including one done in gestures (not sign language) without words at all. As long as we two, the minister, and the witnesses agreed that it was a marriage ceremony, it was a valid marriage; and upon the signed license being returned to the clerk, we would be retroactively (as of the date of the ceremony) bound by the laws pertaining to marriage in our state.
Speaking of laws pertaining to marriage, you might check your state-- as far as I understand it, Oklahoma has some laws regarding the ability of the wife to have sex, mostly dealing with possible monetary damage suits brought by the husband against someone who injures her and makes her unable to, though.
Crow
The rules I listed are for my state. You do also have to obtain a license in most states, but not all. The license includes things like getting bloodwork done, and verifying your age, and having witnesses and/or officiant, etc. But to get the officiant to sign the license in our state, you just have to identify each of you accurately and indicate the intent to marry, and that’s it.
In PA, you can commonlaw marry without an officiant or a license or anything - just start telling other people you are married, and you are. Though you have to do that for seven years to be able to get a legal divorce (otherwise, no legal rights of marriage apply to the split). You can also get a non-officiant license. That’s what we did, as it was a Quaker service (no ministers). Two witnesses, but no officiant.
For which?
For the notion that states tend to encourage procreation, I can cite the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut. In that case, the state of Connecticut attempted to outlaw the use of contraception. Of course, the Supreme Court held they could not do that, but they did make the attempt.
For the rest, I have no internet cites for you, Manny. I am applying basic principles of contract law to the proposed clause presented in the OP’s hypothetical. Freedom of contract is a fundamental principal of American law. While it has eroded somewhat over the years, it is still the general rule that parties are free to contract with each other upon whatever terms they choose and the resulting contracts are enforced unless they are illegal or violative of public policy.
The clause in question is analogous to an employment contract. As chula notes, the courts will not specifically enforce employment contracts. (That is, they will not order the employee to perform his duties of employment.) However, if the employee violates the terms of employment, that employee may be subject to contractual penalties (i.e., money damages).
The proposed pre-nup clause could be handled the same way. No court is going to compel the bride in our hypothetical to engage in sexual intercourse with her husband, or to perform housework. However, she may be subjected to contractual penalties for her refusal to perform.
I see only two potential problems. If the contract is construed by the court to amount to “sex for hire” then it might be deemed an illegal contract to commit prostitution.
The only other potential problem I see is that (to the extent this is treated as an employment agreement) it might run afoul of wage and hour laws. I don’t know enough about that area of law to offer an opinion. However, I suspect the contract would not trigger those laws because the wife would be (by analogy) an “independent contractor.”
Sorry there are no more cites, but I’m not aware of any court decision where this type of clause has been put to the test.
One more cite:
Thumbnail history of the freedom of contract in US law.
As I mentioned, the principal has been eroded, but, in general, parties may contract to do anything which is not illegal (e.g., a contract to commit murder) or against public policy.
But what could the remedy possibly be? No remedy = no right.
In Ontario, Canada, you can not. It is void for policy. I don’t have any cases handy, but I researched it a few years ago (my client was getting out of a pre-nup that had been drafted with such a term – and a few other terms including a curfew clause and a frquency of pregnancies clause).
Any lawyer worth his or her salt is going to put a default clause in the contract spelling out the penalty for failure to perform. So the remedy would be determined by the language of the contract.
For example, the contract could be drafted to provide that in the event the wife fails to perform her duties, she forfeits her claim to marital property or alimony in any subsequent divorce. Or, the contract could provide for an “allowance” which would be cut off if the wife defaults on her obligations. Or some other penalty I haven’t thought of could be devised and included in the contract.
Even in the absence of a default clause, the penalty for failure to perform could be determined by an inverse application of the principles of quantum meruit. I.e. how much does it cost the husband to hire someone else to do the cooking, cleaning, etc. the wife was supposed to perform? There is the measure of his damages.
Now of course, this gets a bit tricky when it comes to sexual services. I suppose you could hire a prostitute to come in and testify as an expert witness on the value of a hummer.
But no, the more I think about it, I think you’re right that a clause requiring sexual services would be void as an illegal contract to commit prostitution.
However, if the OP’s hypothetical left out the bit about sexual services, and required only cooking, housekeeping, etc., I see no reason the clause could not be enforced.