For all the speculation and excitement about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding, there’s an economic truth underpinning it all: This isn’t just a marriage merging two lives. It is also merging two enormous, lucrative brands.

Which means it is almost certain Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce will have a prenuptial agreement on how to handle their assets in the event of a divorce or death.

Ms. Swift — estimated to have a net worth of $2 billion — is the first female musician to have reached billionaire status primarily through her singing and songwriting. Her real estate portfolio stretches across New York, Tennessee, Rhode Island and California. And her Eras Tour generated $2 billion in ticket sales.

Mr. Kelce has a net worth estimated between $70 million and $90 million, amassed through his National Football League contract; his brand partnerships; his sports podcast, “New Heights”; and other investments.

With that kind of wealth at stake, a prenuptial agreement would clearly outline what happened to their finances if they divorced and help them avoid a messy, public split. (A representative for the Swift Group, a financial advisory group founded by Ms. Swift’s father, Scott Swift, said the firm could not answer any questions about whether the couple have a prenup.)

“It’s not romantic, it’s not sexy, but it’s about getting clarity and protecting what each person built before they met each other,” said Vikki Ziegler, a divorce lawyer and founding partner at Ziegler Law Group. “They’ve had a life before — a very successful one.”

“That divorce without a prenup would be the messiest one we’ve seen in a really long time,” she added.

Ms. Ziegler said she had fought for a wide variety of assets in her clients’ names during a divorce, from Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings to wine collections worth $5 million. But perhaps the biggest asset for Ms. Swift to protect is her intellectual property.

Roughly $800 million of the artist’s fortune comes from royalties and touring, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaire List. She has more than a 100 million streams on Spotify every month. In February, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an organization representing the recording industry, confirmed Ms. Swift was the biggest-selling global artist in 2025, for the sixth year in a row.

Marilyn Chinitz, a partner at Blank Rome who advised Tom Cruise in his 2012 divorce from Katie Holmes, said Ms. Swift’s music catalog is her “jewel in the crown.”

“If I were a betting woman — and I am — I would say that this agreement will be what we call a title-based agreement,” she said. “Everything that is in Taylor’s name, now and in the future, will remain her separate property. And she’s got a lot to protect.”

Ms. Swift has been fiercely protective of her intellectual property. She rerecorded several albums and released them as “Taylor’s Version” after Scooter Braun, an investor and former music manager, acquired the rights to her old music. She bought those rights back last year.

Ms. Chinitz, who also advised Belle Burden, the author who wrote about her prenup in her memoir, “Strangers,” added that it was Mr. Cruise and Ms. Holmes’s prenuptial agreement that ensured a smooth divorce between the actors. Child custody — which cannot be detailed in a prenup — is the one issue that parents need to negotiate at the time of the split.

A critical part of a prenup is classifying assets spouses accrue post-marriage as separate or joint. Without that contract, each state has its own rules about how a couple’s finances should be split. In California, for example, it’s a clean-cut 50-50 distribution. States like New York come up with an “equitable distribution” based on each person’s financial circumstances.

The contract also states which state’s law would apply to any issues related to the divorce and prenup.

Several family law attorneys said Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce’s agreement would probably keep all their assets separate. They’re also unlikely to agree to provide each other spousal support because they’re unlikely to need it.

Celebrities have another unique issue they typically address in prenups: confidentiality. That’s usually the starting point when drafting their agreement, said Lauren Crane, a partner at Bender and Crane, a boutique matrimonial law firm.

Confidentiality clauses prevent couples from talking about the details of their marriage or divorce, ensuring that part of their lives remains private.

But Ms. Ziegler said she would ask for a carve-out in that clause for Ms. Swift.

“I would probably do an exception tied to her work as a songwriter, because, literally, her art is her business,” she said.

“That’s what makes her wealth,” she added. “She talks about love and about heartbreak. I would probably be excluding anything that she says about him in the confidentiality clause in the prenup.”

Divorce lawyers working with celebrities and wealthy couples have seen an assortment of provisions included in prenups, from “bad boy” clauses, which include penalties for adulterous husbands, to weight-gain clauses, punishing wives who push past a certain number on the scale. These are rarely enforceable, though, lawyers said.

Beyond assets typically owned by the wealthy — real estate, cars, jewelry, artwork, luxury and handbags, to name a few — are pets.

Ms. Swift, who embraced the reputation of being a “cat lady” after a quip by Vice President JD Vance, and Mr. Kelce might also have to consider what happens to their pets, if they adopt any after marriage. Under New York law, for example, pets aren’t treated like personal property. Courts need to consider the best interest of “companion animals” during a divorce proceeding.

A prenup doesn’t just matter when a couple splits — it also clarifies what happens to a couple’s finances when one of them dies. A clause that would need to be addressed if the prenup was executed in New York is the “elective share” clause, which automatically gives a third of the deceased spouse’s estate to his or her partner.

“I can’t imagine that is the way they would want that to go,” said Mr. Steinberg from Berkman Bottger Newman and Schein.