What might Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's prenup look like?
Two of the most powerful names in music and sports — Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce — are getting married. And so, here comes the bride — and the attorneys.
As Nancy Chemtob, a New York-based divorce lawyer who represented both Bobby Flay and Mary-Kate Olsen, says, “It would be nonsensical for them not to have a prenuptial agreement.”
“Her wealth is tremendous and his wealth is substantial, and that’s what the irony is‚” Chemtob remarks, referring to the fact that Kelce’s wealth would surpass most other potential partners but still doesn’t come close to Swift’s.
Without a prenup, every dollar earned by either Swift or Kelce would be considered marital property and divided evenly during a divorce. Which is why James Sexton, a family lawyer who represents celebrities and billionaires in the New York metropolitan area, predicts that Swift and Kelce will come up with their own split.
Sexton says their prenup is likely to take a “yours, mine and ours” structure. Their assets would be separated into three tranches: assets in Swift’s name, assets in Kelce’s name and joint assets. If Kelce gave Swift a gift, for example, the gift would be Swift’s property. Any gifts received at the wedding would be split between the two, regardless of the sender.
In the case of divorce, both Swift and Kelce would retain their individual assets — and respective future earnings — plus half of any joint assets such as a shared car or home. Inheritances, personal injury awards or the appreciation of separate property owned before the marriage would not be subject to division.
“It’s a whole lot easier doing a prenup for somebody like Travis and Taylor than it is for a garbage man and a nurse,” Sexton says, meaning that if Swift and Kelce decide to retain their individual assets, they wouldn’t be concerned about covering their costs of living in the event of a divorce.
It is uncertain whether Swift or Kelce will have more wealth decades from their wedding date — but it wouldn’t matter in this type of prenup structuring because the money they make off their separate careers wouldn’t be split. That said, Sexton says Swift’s musical career will likely continue to be more lucrative than Kelce’s athletic career, regardless of his podcast and other endorsements.
Prenups are less about fortune-telling and more about insuring for a possible divorce. Celebrity clients without them have entered Sexton’s office, requesting a divorce in which all assets are evenly split, and it still “takes eight lawyers six months to figure out what this person has and how to divide it in half,” he says.
In these cases, expert evaluations come into play: What is this person’s future revenue stream likely to look like? What is this catalogue of music going to be worth? What is the contract this person signed likely to garner? This becomes even more complicated in high net-worth divorces since, as Sexton explains, “If you have enough money, you can hire experts to say almost anything.”
By reducing this forensic accounting to just an analysis of joint assets, prenups can potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars, time, privacy loss and, as Sexton says, “a tremendous amount of headache.”
Some experts may be hired to offer opinions about how to divide the joint assets spelled out by a prenup. But, for most of Swift and Kelce’s revenue streams, the money stays “clean,” Sexton says.
While prenups have become less controversial over time, Sexton says he still watches some of his celebrity clients lie about having signed them during television interviews. “It’s just not true, I have it in my safe,” he says.
Prenups cannot remove the possibility of ugly divorces, especially if there are disputes related to custody, visitation or child support. Ownership of children and pets cannot be bound by a prenup.
But prenups remove much of the financial risk for divorce. Randall Kessler, who often represents famous athletes for the Atlanta-based firm Kessler & Solomiany, says divorce court is “very unpredictable.” If a judge happens to be a Taylor Swift fan, even though that should not matter, Kessler says, it might.
Some of Kessler’s clients include Cardi B, Cam Newton and Dominique Wilkins. He’s also opposed celebrities such as Michael Jordan, Ludacris, Usher Raymond and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia).
Some of the prenups Kessler wrote for athletes included “bad boy clauses,” a provision that makes clear a prenuptial agreement will remain valid in the case of cheating. On the other hand, some clients have requested provisions that create million-dollar penalties if a partner is caught cheating.
Michael Stutman, another prestigious New York City matrimonial litigator and partner at Alter Wolff Foley & Stutman, gets requests for everything from infidelity “penalty boxes” to expected levels of sexual intimacy during the marriage. There can be provisions about getting or preserving plastic surgeries and covenants to maintain certain levels of sobriety.
Stutman says, “The shopping list goes on and on and on. After doing this for a while, there isn’t anything surprising.”
Only the attorneys who have potentially been tasked with drafting Swift and Kelce’s prenup will know what exactly it holds. Those attorneys will, of course, need to keep the prenup’s contents confidential.
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