Bill and Melinda Gates Announce to Divorce after 27 Years of Marriage

After 27 years of marriage, billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates have announced their divorce through their individual account of twitter saying “we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives”.

(extract from Bill Gates’s Twitter Account)

@BilGates

May 4, 2021

After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage. 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. 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. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.

– Melinda Gates and Bill Gates

Brief History and the Huge Success of Bill Gates

Bill Gates (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, author, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. And he has been estimated as the world’s wealthiest people in the Forbes list since 1987. From 1995 to 2017, he continuously held the title of the richest person in the world under the list of Forbes every year except from 2010 to 2013. As of April 2021, Gates had an estimated net worth of US$146.7 billion, making him the third-richest person in the world.

How Billionaire Bill and Melinda Gates Met

The couple first met in the 1980s when Melinda joined Bill’s Microsoft firm as a product manager in 1987 in an occasion that the two sat together at a business dinner that year in New York.

They started dating to the stage that, as Bill told a Netflix documentary: “We cared a lot for each other and there were only two possibilities: either, we were going to break up or we were going to get married.”

Therefore, they got married in 1994 on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Two years later, their first daughter Jennifer Katharine Gates was born, followed by their only son Rory John Gates in 1999, and their youngest daughter, Phoebe Adele Gates in 2002.

Bill Gates Shifts Focus from Microsoft to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

In January 2000, Bill Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft. In June 2008, Gates made his transitional part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation Bill and his wife, Melinda Gates, established in 2000. In February 2014, he stepped down as chairman of the board of Microsoft. Since March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft in order to focus more on his philanthropic activities such as climate change, global health and development, and education.

The billionaire has his concept of money. Huge amount of money have been given to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, of which reported as the world’s largest private charity. Bill led an early 21st century vaccination campaign which significantly contributed to the eradication of the wild poliovirus in Africa through the foundation as well. In 2010, Gates and his friend Warren Buffette founded The Giving Pledge, which call on other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy for good causes.

In 2020, Bill stepped down from Microsoft’s board aiming to put more efforts on his philanthropic activities. It is estimated that the billionaire couple would continuously run the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation together although they have started a different life after divorce.

Influence on Melinda from the Wealth Arrangement of Bill Gates after Divorce

Based on the ranking of Forbes, Bill Gates, now 65, is still ranking between the very top ranking position as the wealthiest people in the world. After the divorce, it has raised much concern on Bill’s wealth arrangement to Melinda, now 56. Will Melinda be one of the richest women in the world? It is easily understood to be the hot topics in the world.

Marriage is a mistake when a woman has got married with the wrong guy. However, it cannot be judged by all means. Ironically, a divorce will make a woman more rich and happy in her new stage of life sometimes.