Bill Gates Officially Divorced From Melinda
Marriage of 27 years between Microsoft’s co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates and Melinda officially ended this week after court filing
Bill and Melinda Gates are officially divorced this week after 27-years of marriage, according to a court filing with the King County Superior Court in Washington.
The court filing on Monday made the divorce official, three months after the couple surprised many when they announced their plan to split up in May.
Shortly after the separation was announced, it emerged that Bill Gates’s March 2020 resignation from Microsoft’s board of directors came after the board had hired an outside law firm to investigate a romantic relationship he had with a Microsoft employee.
High profile divorce
Gates at the time admitted there was an affair back in 2000, but pointed out that this had noting to do with him stepping down from Microsoft’s board, and the affair almost 20 years ago had “ended amicably.”
There was questions as to the timing of these reports from ‘anonymous sources’, just a week after a divorce between the two parties had been announced.
According to CNBC, Monday’s filing reportedly 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.
The divorce could prove to be an expensive exercise for one of the world’s richest men with a personal fortune of $152 billion.
Noted philanthropist
Despite the divorce, Bill Gates is viewed as a positive role model by many people.
As the former CEO and co-founder of software giant Microsoft, Gates is a well known philanthropist.
He is also a co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which does a lot good in the world, such as almost eliminating polio and reducing death from malaria.
Last month the Foundation said Melinda French Gates will resign if after two years either of the two concludes that they cannot work together.
Until now, perhaps the only bit of shade thrown at Bill Gates in recent times came from Microsoft’s other co-founder Paul Allen, who passed away in 2018 after a long and protracted battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Allen wrote in his “Idea Man” memoir book in 2011 that Gates and Steve Ballmer had colluded against him in the 1980s.
Allen was first diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in September 1982, but went on to beat the disease.
But months later in March 1983, he resigned from Microsoft amid accusations that Gates and Ballmer were attempting to reduce his stock holdings in the company.
