Today I’m talking to fellow divorce attorney, Gabi Jones, about some interesting factors regarding the divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates. We discuss the increasing frequency of grey divorce, how a person’s net worth is determined, the difference between “fault” and “no fault” divorce grounds, and the impact of focused philanthropy.
Show notes:
The Gateses’ divorce was just finalized on August 2, 2021. They didn’t have a pre-nup or separation agreement, and they’d been married for 27 years, so we expected it to take longer, but it all went through in just 3 months. They announced the divorce May 3, 2021, on Twitter. Their youngest had just turned 18.
There’s been an uptick in “grey divorce,” or divorce for couples who are over 50, who’ve often been married for 20+ years. These often seem to be initiated by the wife. Researchers think it may be linked to feminism and more education and opportunities for women.
Bill Gates started Microsoft in the early 80s. He started dating Melinda in 1987, and they didn’t get married until 1994. By then, MS was already a billion dollar company and Bill was one of the richest men in the U.S., so it is surprising they didn’t do a pre-nup. Stupid, or romantic?
When they announced their divorce, The NY Times reported that Bill Gates had met with Jeffrey Epstein many times since 2011, even though he’s always denied a business relationship with Epstein. It’s really unclear what ties were there, but seems possible that whatever connection may have solidified Melinda’s decision to go forward with the divorce.
Several news outlets ran stories mid May about employees of the Gates Foundation that mentioned questionable behavior--that Bill may have pursued women that worked for Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
It seems Melinda had been meeting with lawyers for a while before the announcement, and Bill had just retired from Microsoft. They have a great PR team; hard to find much credible info online. They are worth about $124 billion, but a lot of that is part of the foundation. They are still co-members of the board of trustees. Warren Buffet stepped down (who was also on the board).
Currently, their joint will only commits $10 million per kid. The rest would go to the foundation, but the wills may change now post separation. They are adding more trustees to the board and doing a two-year trial period for how it works to still run the foundation together. Part of the settlement of the divorce outlines that if they can’t make it work to run the foundation together, Bill will still give Melinda money for her philanthropic initiatives. Even since the divorce announcement, they’ve added another $15 million to the endowment. It seems like things will keep moving forward with the foundation.
It seems clear Melinda happily took a smaller personal amount of money so that she could focus on her priority of the foundation. Grounds of divorce is listed as “no fault” on their decree. It usually just means you don’t want to be married anymore; nothing specific happened or was blamed on one party.
They should be given a lot of credit for prioritizing their foundation of equal or fair splitting of assets and getting over whatever personal hurt or wanting to punish the other. Their foundation literally makes such big differences in the world.