US founders who've hired Indian dev agencies — how did your contracts hold up when things went wrong?

I've been going deep on a problem that I think is undertalked in the outsourcing space, and I want to pressure-test my thinking with people who've actually lived it.
I spent a few weeks reading through Upwork threads, HN discussions, and legal forums specifically about US-India dev engagements that went sideways. The pattern I kept seeing: by the time there's a dispute, the contract was never going to resolve it cleanly. Not because anyone was acting in bad faith, but because the SOW or term agreements were vague enough that both sides were technically right.

A few specific things I noticed that I'd love to hear your experience on:

1. Scope defined by features, not outcomes
   "Build a dashboard" with no acceptance criteria. Did you ever ship something your client swore wasn't what they asked for — even though you built exactly what the SOW said? Or vice versa?

2. IP ownership across jurisdictions
   Indian Copyright Act Section 17 treats contractor-created work differently than US "work for hire" doctrine. Have you ever actually had this come up? Or is it mostly theoretical risk in practice?

3. Payment structures and FEMA
   Have you ever had a vendor go quiet near delivery? Wondering if cross-border remittance compliance on the Indian side is a real friction point or overblown.

I'm building something in this space and I want to know if my assumptions match reality before I get too far in.

What's your experience been? Did your SOW ever save you, or did it just give you something to argue over? What is something you feel would make outsourcing easier?