Bill and Melinda Gates, who run one of the world’s largest philanthropies, are divorcing after 27 years of marriage.
They both announced the divorce on Twitter in posts at the same time.
“After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” they wrote. Bill Gates, the co-founder of the software giant Microsoft, has an estimated net worth of $130.5 billion, ranking him fourth on Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest people.

They added that together they would continue to run the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose mission is 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,” according to the statements.
According to Melinda Gates’s divorce filing, obtained by the gossip website TMZ, the couple signed a separation contract. She is not requesting spousal support. Her filing called the marriage “irretrievably broken.” Bill Gates filed a joinder, meaning he supports the dissolution of the marriage.
The Gateses met at Microsoft, where Melinda worked developing multimedia products for the company. They married in 1994 on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Melinda left Microsoft in 1996. The couple have three children.
The couple have spent much of the past two decades focused on their foundation. Bill Gates stepped down as chief software architect at Microsoft and gave up his day-to-day duties in 2008 to work full time at the foundation. He stepped down as Microsoft’s chairman in 2014.

Their philanthropy issued nearly $55 billion in total grant payments through the end of 2019, focusing on addressing the inequities in global health and the U.S. education systems.
The end of their marriage comes a little more than two years after another Seattle billionaire, Jeff Bezos, announced that he and his wife at the time, MacKenzie, were divorcing.

Source: Washington Post