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Bill and Melinda Gates to divorce after 27 years marriage
Billionaire benefactors Bill and Melinda Gates, co-founders of one of the world’s largest private charitable foundations, filed for divorce on Monday after 27 years of marriage but pledged to continue their philanthropic work together.
Bill, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, and Melinda, an author and businesswoman, announced their decision to separate in an identical statement posted on their individual Twitter accounts.
“Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives,” the statement read. “We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”
The couple, who met at Microsoft and married in Hawaii in 1994, asked for privacy.
A joint petition for dissolution of marriage filed by the couple in King County Superior Court in Seattle stated: “The marriage is irretrievably broken.”
The couple asked the court to approve their agreement on division of assets, but did not disclose details, according to Reuters news agency.
Bill Gates, 65, founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen.
His net worth stands at an estimated $130.5bn, according to Forbes, and he has donated $35.8bn worth of Microsoft stock to the couple’s foundation.
He announced last year he would be stepping down from Microsoft’s board to focus full-time on his work as the foundation’s co-chair.
Melinda Gates, 56, serves as the foundation’s co-chair and is the founder of Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company that focuses on advancing the interests of American women and families.
Launched in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private philanthropic foundation in the United States and one of the biggest in the world, with net assets of $43.3 billion at the end of in 2019, according to its website.
In 2020, the foundation announced it was committing more than $1.75bn to support the global response to COVID-19.
Since its inception, the foundation said it has awarded more than $54.8bn in direct payments focussing its activities on health, development and climate.
The pair “will continue to work together to shape and approve foundation strategies, advocate for the foundation’s issues and set the organization’s overall direction,” the Gates Foundation said in a statement.
Future direction
The pair “will continue to work together to shape and approve foundation strategies, advocate for the foundation’s issues and set the organization’s overall direction,” the Gates Foundation said in a statement.
The Gates’ is the second high-profile divorce among tech’s ultra-wealthy in recent years. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Scott, separated in 2019 after 25 years of marriage.
Scott, an author and philanthropist, went on to donate $5.7bn of her fortune in 2020 to charities focused on racial justice and food insecurity. She married Dan Jewett, who worked as a chemistry teacher at her children’s school, earlier this year.
David Callahan, founder of the Insider Philanthropy website and author of ‘The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age’ says it is too early to know how the Gates’ Foundation will be affected by the divorce.
Melinda Gates, who has begun using the name Melinda French Gates recently, has been turning her attention to women and girls and secured Scott’s support in a $40m gender equality fund that is due to make its first awards later this year.
“You can imagine two separate tracks where they’re both working together at the foundation, and each is pursuing their own independent philanthropy outside the foundation,” Callahan told the Associated Press.
“Nobody knows what the terms are of their divorce agreement. But if Melinda Gates ends up with some portion of that wealth and turns to creating her own foundation, it would be among one of the biggest foundations probably in America.”
News
‘I’ll bring my plane… I plan on keeping it for another four years’ – Biden on second debate with Trump
President Biden and former President Trump agreed to hold a second debate Sept. 10 hosted by ABC News.
The two candidates had already accepted an invitation earlier Wednesday to attend a CNN debate on June 27, and both confirmed later in the day on social media that they plan to attend the ABC debate in September.
“I’ve also received and accepted an invitation to a debate hosted by ABC on Tuesday, September 10th,” Biden posted on the social platform X. “Trump says he’ll arrange his own transportation. I’ll bring my plane, too. I plan on keeping it for another four years.”
Biden, of course, is referring to the presidential jet, Air Force One.
“It is my great honor to accept the CNN Debate against Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST PRESIDENT in the History of the United States and a true Threat to Democracy, on June 27th,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Likewise, I accept the ABC News Debate against Crooked Joe on September 10th.”
It marked a whirlwind few hours that started with Biden’s campaign publicly proposing two deabtes in June and September and ended with both candidates agreeing to a date and host.
ABC News had planned to host a GOP primary debate in New Hampshire, but it was canceled after Trump and Nikki Haley said they would not attend. Martha Raddatz of ABC co-moderated one of the 2016 presidential debates; the network did not host a debate in 2020.
The candidates have chosen to go around the Commission on Presidential Debates, the organization that has arranged the showdowns dating back to 1988.
Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon suggested working with outlets that hosted GOP primary debates in 2016 and Democratic primary debates in 2020 to avoid any perceptions of bias.
ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Women Affairs says it is investigating a plan by a lawmaker in central Niger state to marry off some 100 female orphans of unknown ages later this month.
Speaker of the Niger State Assembly Abdulmalik Sarkin-Daji announced the mass wedding last week but called off the ceremony following widespread outrage.
Minister of Women Affairs Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, speaking to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, condemned the plans.
Kennedy-Ohanenye said she had petitioned the police and filed a lawsuit to stop the marriages pending an investigation to ascertain the age of the orphans and whether they consented to the marriages.
“This is totally unacceptable by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and by the government” of Nigeria, she said.
Last week, Sarkin-Daji announced his support for the mass wedding of the orphans, whose relatives were killed during attacks by armed bandits. He said it was part of his support to his constituents following an appeal for wedding funding by local traditional and religious leaders.
The mass wedding had been scheduled for May 24.
“That support I intend to give for the marriage of those orphans, I’m withdrawing it,” he said. “The parents can have the support [money], if they wish, let them go ahead and marry them off. As it is right now, I’m not threatened by the action of the minister.”
Despite national laws prohibiting it, forced or arranged marriage is a common phenomenon in Nigeria, especially among rural communities in the predominantly Muslim north, where religious and cultural norms such as polygamy favor the practice.
Poor families often use forced marriage to ease financial pressure, and the European Union Agency for Asylum says girls who refuse could face repercussions such as neglect, ostracism, physical assault and rape.
Raquel Kasham Daniel escaped being married off as a teenager when her father died and now runs a nonprofit helping children, especially less-privileged girls, get a formal education for free.
She said the ability of women to avoid forced marriage in Nigeria depends on their income and education.
“I was 16 when I lost my dad and I was almost married off, but then I ran away from home. And that gave me the opportunity to complete my education, and now I have a better life,” Daniel said.
“So, the reason why I prioritize education is to make sure that other girls have access to quality schooling so that it will help them make informed decisions about their lives. Education not only increases our awareness as girls about our rights but also enhances our prospects for higher income earning,” she said.
Thirty percent of girls in Nigeria are married before they turn 18, according to Girls Not Brides, a global network of more than 1,400 civil society groups working to end child marriage.
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