BILL, MELINDA GATES TO DIVORCE AFTER 27 YEARS OF MARRIAGE

SEATTLE: Billionaire benefactors Bill and Melinda Gates, co-founders of one of the world’s largest private charitable foundations, filed for divorce on Monday after 27 years of marriage but pledged to continue their philanthropic work together.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has become one of the most powerful and influential forces in global public health, spending more than $50 billion over the past two decades to bring a business approach to combating poverty and disease.

In a joint petition for dissolution of marriage, the couple asserted their legal union was “irretrievably broken”, but said they had reached agreement on how to divide their marital assets. No details of that accord were disclosed in the filing in a Seattle court. Bill Gates, 65, who co-founded Microsoft Corp, and his wife, Melinda French Gates, 56, met after she joined the software giant as a product manager. The two got married in January 1994 in Hawaii. “After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” the two said in a joint statement posted on each of their individual Twitter accounts. “We no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life,” they said.

The divorce petition, which states that the couple have no minor children, comes after the youngest of their three offspring recently turned 18.

Launched in 2000, the non-profit Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ranks as the largest private philanthropic foundation in the United States and one of the world’s biggest, according to the latest financials shown on its website.

In their divorce petition, the two asked the court “to dissolve our marriage” and to divide their communal property, business interests and liabilities.