Bill and Melinda Gates: A look at their life together

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda announced on Tuesday that they were getting divorced. They said they would continue to work together at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable foundation. In identical tweets, they said they had made the decision to end their marriage of 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," they said in a statement. "We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life."

Here's a look back at their years together as a couple.

The marriage

They were married in 1994 in Hawaii. They met after Melinda began working at Microsoft as a product manager in 1987. In her 2019 memoir, "The Moment of Lift", Melinda Gates wrote about her childhood, life and private struggles as the wife of a public icon and stay-at-home mom with three kids. She won Bill Gates' heart after meeting at a work dinner, sharing a mutual love of puzzles and beating him at a math game.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The sprawling Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the most influential private foundation in the world, with an endowment worth nearly USD50 billion. It has focused on global health and development and US education issues since incorporating in 2000.

As the public face of the foundation's Covid-19 grants and advocacy work, Bill Gates has come under fire for being a staunch supporter of intellectual property rights for vaccine makers. While the tech icon says protecting the shots' recipes will ensure incentives for research and development, critics claim that mentality hampers supply in favor of drug company profits.

About Bill Gates

Bill Gates is the world's fourth-richest person with a net worth of $130.5 billion, according to Forbes. Gates dropped out of Harvard University to co-found technology giant Microsoft with school friend Paul Allen in 1975. Gates owned 49% of Microsoft at its initial public offering in 1986, which made him an instant multi-millionaire. With Microsoft's explosive growth, he soon became the world's richest person. He has since lost that title, partly by donating money to philanthropic causes.  Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk and Louis Vuitton boss Bernard Arnault and his family take the three top spots on the Forbes wealth list, with Gates at No. 4.
Of late, he has been actively commenting on and participating in the fight against COVID-19.

Melinda's long journey

The 56-year-old Texas-raised computer scientist, who met Bill Gates, 65, at a company dinner in New York, will continue to run the Gates foundation with him. But she has also positioned herself, in a solo capacity, as an activist for women's rights. In 2015, she founded Pivotal Ventures, an investment company focused on women and families, while her book is centered on issues of female empowerment. "The world is finally waking up to the fact that none of us can move forward when half of us are held back. The data is clear: empowered women transform societies," she wrote in a note about her book.

Total donation by Gates to Gates Foundation

From 1994 through 2018, Bill and Melinda Gates gave the foundation more than $36 billion, according to the foundation's website. Warren Buffett has donated more than $29 billion of his fortune to the Gates Foundation since 2006, according to filings.

Division of joint assets

The couple, who are with three children, have a custom mansion with a 2020 assessed value of $130.8 million, according to the King County Department of Assessments, on Lake Washington, which lies between Seattle and its eastside suburbs including Redmond, where Microsoft is headquartered. The financial details of their split remain unclear. They are seeking division of joint assets, according to a separation agreement they have reached, filed in King County Superior Court. As one of the few US states with so-called "community property" laws, Washington presumes that most property acquired over the course of a marriage belongs jointly to the spouses and is divided equally in a divorce. The spouses can also agree that certain assets are separate property, meaning they belong to one of them. Inheritances often fall in this category.

The philanthropic streak

Melinda and Bill first encountered extreme poverty when they visited Africa in 1993. To them, it was the most unjust thing they had seen and it inspired their work ever since.

"Melinda is an amazing wife, mother, partner, and friend"

While promoting Melinda Gates' book, 'The Moment of Lift', Bill Gate took to Gates Notes (which has official blogs of Bill Gates) website and wrote, "I would say this even if I weren't married to the author: The Moment of Lift is a terrific read."

He also urged the readers to pre-order the book as Melinda would donate all the amount she receives from this book to charity.

"Melinda is the most important person in my life: an amazing wife, mother, partner, and friend (and now accomplished author!). I am lucky that she has shared these insights with me for all these years, and delighted that she is now sharing them with the rest of the world too," added Bill.

Total net worth of Bill and Melinda Gates

As per Forbes, the Microsoft co-founder is fourth on the list of the world's richest individuals with a net worth of $130.5 billion. However, the net worth of Melinda Gates, who founded Pivotal Ventures, an investment company focused on women and families in 2015, is not clear. She has also authored a book.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation net assets

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation boasted of net assets of $43.3 billion at the end of 2019. Last year, the foundation said it would spend $300 million on treatment, detection and vaccines to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Compiled by Anshika Awasthi

Pictures: Instagram/ Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates