Biggest divorce settlement in history if there isn't a prenup, there doesn't appear to be.
:-)
THE NEW YORK POST
Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie announce divorce — unclear if the couple has a prenuptial agreement
By 0 and Lia Eustachewich
Published: Jan 9, 2019 11:49 a.m. ET
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/je...ent-2019-01-09
The Amazon founder and his wife are divorcing after 25 years of marriage.
Amazon AMZN, +0.47% CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, are divorcing after 25 years of marriage, the couple announced Wednesday.
“We want to make people aware of a development in our lives,” tweeted Bezos, the world’s richest person. “As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separate, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends.”
He continued: “We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other. If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again.”
The 54-year-old sits at the top of Forbes world’s billionaires ranking, with a real-time worth of $137.4 billion.
It’s unclear if the couple has a prenuptial agreement.
They reside in Washington state, which is a “community property state” — meaning divorcing couples without a prenup split assets 50-50, TMZ reported.
The Bezos own five homes in Medina, Washington, Beverly Hills, Van Horn, Texas, DC and Manhattan — making Jeff the 25th biggest landowner in the nation, Business Insider said.
The couple met in New York at hedge fund D.E. Shaw when Jeff, the company’s vice president, interviewed MacKenzie for a job, according to Business Insider.
MacKenzie, a Princeton graduate, landed the gig as a research associate and the two office neighbors fell in love — fast.
MacKenzie, who was 23 at the time and made the first move by asking Jeff out to lunch, was smitten.
“My office was next door to his, and all day long I listened to that fabulous laugh,” she recalled in a 2013 interview with Vogue. “How could you not fall in love with that laugh?”
Within three months, they were engaged and, three months later in 1993, they were hitched.
Jeff also gushed about his longtime love.
“I think my wife is resourceful, smart, brainy, and hot, but I had the good fortune of having seen her résumé before I met her, so I knew exactly what her SATs were,” he told Vogue.
In 1994, the newlyweds quit their Wall Street jobs and moved cross country to Seattle, where Jeff launched Amazon. He hired MacKenzie as an accountant — as one of the online bookstore’s first employees.
“To me, watching your spouse, somebody that you love, have an adventure — what is better than that?” MacKenzie told CBS.
The couple went on to have four children.
MacKenzie, 48, is an award-winning novelist who penned the “The Testing of Luther Albright” in 2005 and “Traps” eight years later.
At Princeton, where Jeff also attended, she studied under legendary author Toni Morrison, who told Vogue that she was “one of the best students” she ever had.
Last year, Jeff and MacKenzie launched the homeless charity Day One Fund together.
In his statement on Wednesday, he hinted that he and his soon-to-be ex-wife would continue working together.
“We’ve had such a great life together as a married couple, and we also see wonderful futures ahead, as parents, friends, partners in ventures and projects, and as individuals pursuing ventures and adventures,” Jeff wrote. “Though the labels might be different, we remain a family, and we remain cherished friends.”
[Reply]
So business owner has wife, has several sons with her. Gets divorced. Marries wife #2. Has one child, a daughter, with wife #2. Daughter never works in the biz.
Boys join the biz and help it grow ALOT. Idiot dad/owner doesn't do anything with stock except own 100% of it himself. He gets old, semi-retires, still owns 100% while the boys take over the show.
Wife decides she wants divorce. Now, they were married for a LONG time, but the daughter is an adult, and the wife is now like 80. She doesn't need much to survive for the rest of her life comfortably. Unfortunately, due to a total lack of planning and forethought by the father (and his sons) the wife is now entitled to own 50% of the company.
Ignoring the actual biz owner and his wife (let's face it, they're well off regardless of this whole process) -- the real upshot of this is that 50% of the value of the biz at the time of the divorce gets transferred -- really -- to the
daughter, with the remaining 50% being split among the boys. Now the boys get the own the biz and can continue to grow it and earn from it, but that's a real fucking over for them, especially since they are now PAYING the daughter for 50% of the growth that they massively contributed to creating.
Plan ahead kids. Use lawyers. Be smart.
Or you know, watch your kids sit on a spiked dildo because you're either too dumb or because you want to continue to exert power/control long after you should've given it to your kids.
[Reply]
