Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates have finally gotten divorced after 27 years of marriage.
A filing with the King County Superior Court in Washington made the move official, three months after the couple announced their plan to split up.
Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates were among the most prominent couples in global business, having once worked together. They traveled together and participated in joint media interviews.
However, things took a different turn when according to some reports Melinda French Gates started getting uncomfortable with her husband’s connection with billionaire investor Jeffrey Epstein. Just after media outlets published details of the bond between the two men, she hired divorce lawyers.
More so, the filing noted that neither spouse asked for a name change, but it doesn’t give insight into everything that will be changing. A separation contract was not filed with the court.
While the two have agreed to keep working together on philanthropy, it’s possible that collaboration will also end along with the marriage.
Last month the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where the two are co-chairs and trustees, disclosed that Melinda French Gates will resign if after two years either of the two concludes that they cannot work together. If that happens, Gates would remain in control and, essentially, buy her out of the foundation, Suzman said. French Gates would receive “personal resources” from Gates for her own philanthropic work, resources that would be “completely separate from the foundation’s endowment”.
It can be recalled that Bill Gates started Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and Gates served as CEO, and Melinda French Gates worked at Microsoft from 1987 to 1996. The two met in 1987 and were married in 1994, and their foundation launched in 2000.
In 2019 Microsoft received a report that Bill Gates had tried to start an intimate relationship with an employee in 2000, and a board committee ran an investigation with help from a law firm, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC earlier. Gates left Microsoft’s board in early 2020, but a spokesperson for Bill Gates told the New York Times that his decision to step down was not related to the affair.
Today Bill Gates is the world’s fourth wealthiest person, with a $152 billion net worth, according to Bloomberg, which means he and French Gates could each be worth around $76 billion following the divorce. Since the Gates said they would be going their separate ways, filings show that Bill Gates’ holding company Cascade Investment has transferred AutoNation and Deere shares to Melinda French Gates.
That notwithstanding, Melinda French Gates has recently been active in philanthropy related to gender equality, alongside MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Meanwhile, in the weeks following the initial announcement of the divorce, Gates faced allegations of questionable workplace conduct in the early years at Microsoft. A spokesperson for Gates called many of these allegations “untruths” in a comment to the New York Times.
Read also: Kim Kardashian is officially a billionaire
