Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates Divorce Finalized

Court records have shown that neither party will change their name or receive spousal support. The separation agreement that determined the split of assets was “not filed with the court,” according to a notation scrawled in blue ink on one of the court documents. It remained unclear, for instance, who will receive their 66,000-square-foot lakefront estate in the Seattle suburbs.

The couple’s three children are all over 18, so there was no custody arrangement necessary. The court document said that neither party had asked to make a formal name change, though Ms French Gates has been publicly using her family name together with her married name since they separated.

The largest outstanding question is how, or indeed whether, the divorced couple can work together at their enormous charity. Both Mr Gates and Ms French Gates have insisted that they will continue to work on behalf of the foundation’s shared mission in areas including global health, poverty reduction and gender equality.

Last month they announced that they had given an additional $15 billion to the foundation, adding to its $50 billion endowments, which already made it by most measures the largest private charitable foundation in the world. The chief executive of the Gates Foundation, Mark Suzman, also said the foundation would add new outside trustees, a step toward better governance that philanthropy experts had urged for years.

At the same time, Mr. Suzman said that Mr. Gates and Ms French Gates had agreed that if either person found after two years that they could not work together Ms French Gates would leave the foundation, receiving funds from Mr Gates to pursue her own charitable endeavours.

NYTimes