Bill and Melinda Gates have officially ended their 27-year marriage, three months after announcing that they intended to divorce.
Their separation was finalised yesterday by a judge in King County, Washington, according to court records.
Neither party will receive spousal support and all assets have been divided according to a separation agreement. No further financial details are outlined in publicly available documents.
As of Monday, Bill Gates’s net worth was around $152 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, meaning that he and Melinda French Gates, 56, could each be worth $76 billion following the high-profile split.
Announcing their divorce in May, the couple said they had reached a deal on how to divide their marital assets. The pair met at Microsoft in 1987 and married in 1994, but said: “We no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”
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Much speculation has surrounded the future of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world’s most influential and generous anti-poverty and public health organisations. At the end of last year, it had an estimated endowment of $50 billion.
The couple initially pledged to continue their philanthropic work together as co-chairs but the foundation announced last month that the pair would instead start with a two-year trial period. If this proves unsuccessful, Bill Gates, 65, would take full control.
In the weeks following the initial announcement, Gates, who holed up in a luxury golf club in California, faced allegations of questionable conduct at work in his early years at Microsoft, which his representatives largely denied.
His resignation from the company’s board of directors last year came after a law firm was hired to investigate a romantic relationship Gates had with an employee two decades earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported. While his representatives acknowledged the relationship, they said his departure was unrelated.
At a billionaire-packed conference hosted by the financial firm Allen & Co last month, an “emotional” Gates “fessed up to messing up” during his marriage and suggested the divorce “was his fault”, an attendee told the New York Post.
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It was also reported that Melinda Gates was dismayed by her husband’s numerous meetings with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
