Bill Gates, Melinda Gates assemble fearsome legal teams as divorce looms
Facing what could be the most expensive divorce in history, Bill and Melinda Gates have assembled a battery of superstar lawyers.
Facing what could be the most expensive divorce in history, Bill and Melinda Gates have assembled a fearsome battery of superstar lawyers to navigate the end of their 27-year marriage.
In the divorce petition the couple filed on Monday there is no mention of any prenuptial agreement between the Microsoft co-founder and his wife, whose combined net worth is estimated at more than $US130 billion ($168bn).
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) May 3, 2021
Instead they both asked the court in King County, Washington, to honour an existing “separation contract” for dividing their property and possessions. Neither the petition nor the couple’s brief public statement mentions any reason for the split other than the “irretrievable breakdown” of their relationship, the specific legal grounds required under state law.
The court documents also show, however, that they have each recruited a crack team of lawyers, just in case. Bill Gates, 65, is being advised by three partners at Munger Tolles & Olson, a Los Angeles practice that has been ranked the best law firm in the country seven times by The American Lawyer.
Melinda Gates, 56, has formed a legal team that includes Robert Cohen, a New York divorce lawyer whose client list has included the media billionaire Michael Bloomberg and both of Donald Trump’s ex-wives, and Sherri Anderson, who represented the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, in his divorce from MacKenzie Scott two years ago. Under the terms of that agreement Scott received a quarter of their jointly held Amazon stock, valued at $38 billion, enough to make her the fourth richest woman in the world. Ted Billbe, a co-counsel to Bill Gates, advised Scott on her record-breaking settlement.
At stake for the Gateses are property assets, business investments and luxury items whose total estimated worth is somewhere between $130 billion (according to Forbes) and $146 billion (according to Bloomberg).
They are the largest owners of farmland in America. Through the holding company Cascade Investment, which was set up to manage Bill’s personal wealth, they have interests in property, energy, transport and hospitality. Their lakeside mansion near Seattle was valued at $130 million by tax assessors last year and has 24 bathrooms, six kitchens, a trampoline room and a reception hall big enough for 200 guests.
In 2010 the couple and Warren Buffett (sixth on the Forbes list of global billionaires, two places behind Bill Gates) created the Giving Pledge to encourage wealthy individuals to give most of their money to charitable causes.
Yet although they have promised to give the bulk of their own wealth away eventually, for now at least the Gateses still retain most of their net worth.
Although there has been no suggestion of impropriety, their marriage was always distinctive. In 1997, three years after he married Melinda, Bill Gates confirmed that he still took an annual weekend break with his ex-girlfriend Ann Winblad, a software entrepreneur and venture capitalist, at her beach cottage in North Carolina.
“We can play putt-putt while discussing biotechnology,” Gates told Time. Winblad, 70, added at the time: “We share our thoughts about the world and ourselves.”
The Gates marriage had neared collapse several times in recent years, two people close to the couple told The New York Times. They worked to keep it together, they said. The couple say they will continue to work together through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
SAVING THE WORLD, MICROSOFT-STYLE
In 2009 Bill Gates outlined a vision for his charitable foundation. Philanthropy could be transformed, he argued, by the lessons he’d learnt in the software business, Rhys Blakely writes.
As a co-founder of Microsoft he had helped to usher in the age of the PC, transforming computers from expensive machines into devices for the middle-classes.
The foundation would try to instigate similar revolutions in global health and development and in education in the United States. His “maniacal focus on drawing in the best talent and measuring results” would make a difference.
And so it has. With an endowment of some $50 billion, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the most influential organisation of its kind. In 2000 it provided dollars 750 million in seed funding for Gavi, which provides vaccines in poor countries. It pumped in $3.25 billion more over the next 20 years.
But other countries added more still – $17 billion. The World Health Organisation estimates that between 2000 and 2013 Gavi’s 440 million immunisations averted six million deaths.
Low-tech solutions have also been important. On malaria, for instance, the progress that has been made in saving lives has largely come from making sure people sleep under mosquito nets.
As the coronavirus pandemic erupted the foundation invested in the development of inoculations, including paying directly for trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab.
The most recent annual letter from the couple on the foundation’s progress signalled diverging interests.
Mr Gates focused on the need for investment in science to tackle the next pandemic. Mrs Gates focused on the pandemic at hand. Globally, she that said her focus would be on the challenges faced by women, who often pay the largest economic penalties.
The Times
More Coverage
One in four Americans fear civil war after poll
Fears that violence is very or somewhat likely to break out after the presidential election are shared by 27 per cent of American adults across the political divide.
Israel targets Lebanese UNESCO site Tyre
Ancient city boasts the remains of a second-century Roman hippodrome, a necropolis, a triumphal arch and an aqueduct.