CLOSING THE GATES

Bill Gates’ $80billion property empire now hangs in the balance after he and his wife of 27 years announced they are divorcing.

Properties up for grabs include a $123million mansion with a trampoline room and a $43million oceanfront mansion with a ten-person jacuzzi.

Gates, worth $130.5billion is one of the only eight people in the world worth over $100billion, and is the fourth richest man in the world.

WHAT DID BILL GATES AND HIS EX DO ON THEIR NC TRIPS?

While in North Carolina, the former couple would ride dune buggies, hang-glide, enjoy long walks on the beach, and “play putt-putt while discussing biotechnology” Bill revealed during the bombshell 1997 interview.

“We share our thoughts about the world and ourselves,” Winblad explained.

“And we marvel about how, as two young overachievers, we began a great adventure on the fringes of a little-known industry and it landed us at the center of an amazing universe.”

It isn’t clear how long or if these yearly trips continued after this interview.

The article also notes that Gates had a picture Winblad on a trip to Germany hanging in his office 24 years ago, as well as a snap of his wife with nine friends on a 1995 vacation to Indonesia.

WHAT ARE THE MOST EXPENSIVE DIVORCES?

Although Bill and Melinda Gates’ divorce might be the most expensive one ever recorded – even potentially dropping Bill from the fourth richest man on earth to the 17th in a 50-50 split – there have been plenty of expensive ones in the past.

Perhaps the most famous example was the split between the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie Scott, in which Scott received $35.6billion in Amazon stock.

She became the third-richest woman in the world at the time, and now is to the richest as her net worth rocketed to $62billion by late 2020 thanks to Amazon’s value exploding during the pandemic.

Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi arms dealer who built a $4 billion fortune, divorced Englishwoman Sandra Daly in 1974 — in a reported $874 million split, which was the most expensive in history at the time.

Elin Nordegren divorced golf legend Tiger Woods in 2010 for a reported $110million.

BILL AND MELINDA GATES DISAGREED ON SOME ASPECTS OF HAVING KIDS

Bill Gates was apparently “stunned” when his wife, Melinda, decided not to go back to work after she had their first child, Jennifer.

Melinda shared in her 2019 book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, that her husband said, “What do you mean, you’re not going back?” when she told him of her decision.

“And I said: ‘We’re lucky enough not to need my income. So this is about how we want to raise a family. You’re not going to downshift at work, and I don’t see how I can put in the hours I need to do a great job at work and raise a family at the same time.”‘

One area they did seem to agree was on not allowing their kids too much access to technology.

“We often set a time after which there is no screen time,” Bill once told the Mirror.

“We don’t have cellphones at the table when we are having a meal, we didn’t give our kids cell phones until they were 14, and they complained other kids got them earlier,” he explained.

BEING WITH BILL WAS “INCREDIBLY HARD,” MELINDA SAID IN 2019

There were times that being married to Bill Gates were “incredibly hard,” Melinda said in 2019 when the couple celebrated their 25th anniversary together.

“When he was having trouble making the decision about getting married, he was incredibly clear that it was not about me, it was about ‘Can I get the balance right between work and family life?’” she told The Sunday Times in 2019.

In the 2019 documentary Inside Bill’s Brain, Melinda described how Bill came to the conclusion of getting married.

“His whiteboard had the pros and the cons of getting married,” Melinda said in the documentary.

MELINDA FELT ‘ALONE’ IN HER MARRIAGE TO BILL

Bill Gates’ wife Melinda felt “alone” and isolated in their 27-year marriage before the Microsoft mogul confirmed their divorce yesterday.

In a 2017 interview, the other half of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation opened up about the reality of being married to her tech billionaire husband after describing how isolated she felt in her book.

In The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, Melinda wrote: “When we first had [our daughter] Jenn, I felt very alone in our marriage.

“Bill was CEO of Microsoft at the time. He was beyond busy; everyone wanted him, and I was thinking, “OK, maybe he wanted to have kids in theory, but not in reality.”‘

But Melinda said they then carved out more “equal” roles and a partnership,” which included Bill driving Jennifer to school several days a week.

BEING WITH BILL WAS “INCREDIBLY HARD,” MELINDA SAID IN 2019

There were times that being married to Bill Gates were “incredibly hard,” Melinda said in 2019 when the couple celebrated their 25th anniversary together.

“When he was having trouble making the decision about getting married, he was incredibly clear that it was not about me, it was about ‘Can I get the balance right between work and family life?’” she told The Sunday Times in 2019.

In the 2019 documentary Inside Bill’s Brain, Melinda described how Bill came to the conclusion of getting married.

“His whiteboard had the pros and the cons of getting married,” Melinda said in the documentary.

BILL AND MELINDA MET BECAUSE THEY WERE LATE TO DINNER

The star power couple originally met by chance after both arrived late to a dinner and sat in the only two empty seats.

In her book, The Moment of Lift, Melinda described how they were both invited to a business dinner and ended up sitting next to each other.

“I showed up late, and all the tables were filled except one, which still had two empty chairs side by side. I sat in one of them. A few minutes later, Bill arrived and sat in the other,” she wrote in the book.

Melinda was a product manager as the only woman in the first ever class of MBA graduates that joined the company.

She then rose the corporate ladder to become general manager of information products, and eventually met the CEO, Bill.

The two then married in Hawaii in 1994.

MELINDA “IS A TRULY EQUAL PARTNER” BILL SAYS

Marking 25 years of marriage in 2019, Bill and Melinda sat down for the Netflix documentary Inside Bill’s Brain and spoke about their marriage.

“In the case of Melinda, it is a truly equal partner,” Bill said. “She’s a lot like me in that she is optimistic and she is interested in science.

“She is better with people than I am. She’s a tiny bit less hardcore about knowing, you know, immunology, than I am,” he joked.

For Valentine’s Day in 2020, Bill Gates posted an Instagram photo showing him standing with his arm around Melinda, with the caption reading “I couldn’t ask for a better partner on this journey.”

BILL’S AND MELINDA’S PROJECTS THROUGH RECENT YEARS

The Gates have been running the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since 2000, when Bill stepped down as Microsoft CEO to run the foundation full time.

In recent years, the couple began focusing on other areas of interest.

In 2015, Bill established Breakthrough Energy, an initiative intended to show climate change, which also includes a venture arm.

Melinda that same year created Pivotal Ventures, a company that makes investments to increase equality.

For the foundation, the couple published annual letters regarding the foundation’s work.

The latest one, published in January, spoke to the impact of the pandemic and their efforts in bringing vaccines worldwide.

“For us, the days became a blur of video meetings, troubling news alerts, and microwaved meals,” they wrote.

BILL GATES, THE FOURTH RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD

The Microsoft co-founder, the world’s fourth-richest man with a networth of $124 billion, currently owns 1.37 percent of Microsoft’s outstanding shares, which are worth more than $26 billion.

Bill created a pledge with Melinda and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett called the Giving Pledge, which would involve anyone who signed on to give more than half of their wealth to charitable causes.

The couple decided to move $20 billion worth of Microsoft stock to their foundation as they wanted to increase their commitment to philanthropy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has more than $51 billion in assets and has invested more than $1.75 billion to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

Bill is the world’s fourth richest person, behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, LVMH’s Bernard Arnault and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

MELINDA WANTS OVER $10 MILLION INHERITANCE FOR CHLDREN

After the billionaire couple announced their split, Melinda may be pushing for their children to inherit more than Bill’s promised $10million each.

Legal experts told Page Six that Melinda left a clue in her blockbuster divorce filing that indicates her apparent change of heart.

The philanthropist took the unconventional step of naming top trust and estate lawyers as her representatives in her divorce filing, along with the customary matrimonial reps.

“Now that Melinda has control — maybe she wanted to leave more to her children than $10 million each. Maybe she didn’t agree,” said divorce attorney Harriet Newman Cohen.

IS BILL GATES INVOLVED IN THE EPSTEIN INVESTIGATION?

Gates has been urged to come forward and give evidence about his ties to Epstein as he reportedly bought homes near the financier and his billionaire friends.

Lawyer Spencer Kuvin, who represents nine Epstein victims, told The Sun that Gates should volunteer any information that could help in the Ghislaine Maxwell investigation.

The Microsoft co-founder has always denied witnessing any wrongdoing during any of his meetings with Epstein.

MELINDA GATES CALLED MARRIAGE WITH BILL ‘INCREDIBLY HARD’

Melinda previously told The Sunday Times that being with Bill was often “incredibly hard” when they marked 25 years of marriage.

“When he was having trouble making the decision about getting married, he was incredibly clear that it was not about me, it was about ‘Can I get the balance right between work and family life?”’ she said in 2019.

Two years before Bill announced their bombshell divorce, he had listed the pros and cons of marriage on a whiteboard in Netflix’s three-episode series, “Inside Bill’s Brain.”

“His whiteboard had the pros and the cons of getting married,” his estranged wife said in the documentary. “His whiteboard had the pros and the cons of getting married.”

WHY DID GATES RESIGN FROM THE BOARD OF MICROSOFT?

Bill Gates’ resignation from Microsoft’s board was allegedly not linked to allegations of an affair with a staffer.

Board members are said to have carried out an investigation into the billionaire’s romantic relationship with a Microsoft engineer in late 2019 after she claimed in a letter she had a sexual relationship with Gates for a number of years.

“There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably,” a spokeswoman for Gates told the Journal, adding that his departure from the board was not related to the relationship.

MELINDA’S DIVORCE LAWYER WORKED ON TRUMP CASE

Robert Cohen, a lawyer now working on Melinda Gates’ divorce settlement, previously represented Donald Trump’s first wife Ivana Trump.

Ivana married the former President in 1977 and divorced him in 1992.

Cohen also represented Marla Maples, who married Donald Trump in December 1993.

He has also represented late Sopranos actor James Gandolfini and Pulp Fiction actress Uma Thurman, according to Chambers and Partners.

WHO IS ANN WINBLAD?

Ann Winblad is a respected software industry entrepreneur and leader in technology.

Winblad is the founding partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and formerly worked for the Federal Reserve.

Winblad dated Bill Gates for several years after meeting in 1984.

The two met during Winblad’s tech consultant position with Microsoft.

After Gates married Melinda French in 1994, he and Winblad continued to have annual get togethers.

FOUNDATION EMPLOYEE PUSHES BACK AGAINST RUMORS

Zhe “Shelly” Wang, 36, an employee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, denied allegations that she broke up the couple.

A BBC analyst translated Wang’s response in Chinese to reports that she had “more than strictly professional relationship” with Bill.

The interpreter, who has worked for the foundation since 2015, dismissed the affair allegations as “crazy” and urged people not to “waste time on unfounded rumors” following Bill and Melinda’s explosive split.

She supposedly took to the Chinese site Weibo to issue a statement on the matter, writing: “I thought that the rumors would go away by themselves, but I did not expect the rumors to become more and more crazily spread.”

WILL BILL AND MELINDA CONTINUE PHILANTHROPY?

In the announcement of their divorce, Bill and Melinda said they would still collaborate on the Gates Foundation, their charity organization.

“We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives,” Gates wrote.

BILL GATES TROLLS TAKE TO TINDER

Spoof accounts started to appear this week on Tinder after the Microsoft co-founder, announced his divorce from Melinda Gates earlier this week.

The accounts, masquerading as the billionaire, offer dates a “third Covid dose.”

One fake account reads, “I’m still rich. I didn’t read your bio becoz I know what they all says, ‘I love dogs, pizza, not looking for hookups bla bla bla’ boring…I’ve seen trees with more personality .”

The fake profile also states :”Likes: Office365, Vaccines, boring girls without personalities (I hear they live here). Dislikes: iMacs, Anti-vaxxers, Google docs”.

WILL MELINDA CHANGE HER LAST NAME?

According to court documents, Melinda Gates will not change her last name back to “French” after the divorce.

She is also not seeking any spousal support, the divorce petition states. 

It appears that Melinda has requested for the pair’s assets and liabilities to be divided equally.

The power couple look set to battle each other for a share of their fortune after the divorce announcement on Monday.

MELINDA COMES AWAY WITH MICROSOFT CASHOUT

Shortly after the release of news about their divorce, Bill Gates gifted $1.8billion in stock to his soon-to-be ex wife Melinda.

Melinda Gates now has command of Cascade’s 14.1 million shares of Canadian National Railway Co. worth about $1.5billion, Bloomberg reported, citing a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from May 3.

Bill Gates also gave 2.94 million shares in AutoNation Inc. stocks to Melinda Gates.

Melinda’s estimated worth is about $70billion, according to Spear’s.

BILL GATES VISITED EPSTEIN’S MANHATTAN MANSION

Bill Gates and Epstein reportedly attended late-night gatherings at Epstein’s Manhattan home.

Gates said he was “intrigued” by the decor inside Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous New York City mansion which included nude art, a painting of Bill Clinton in a dress, and fake breasts.

The two men also reportedly flew together on Epstein’s private jet – dubbed the “Lolita Express.”

Gates has always denied witnessing any wrongdoing during any of his meetings with Epstein.

WHO DID BILL GATES HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH?

The identity of the woman with which Bill Gates had an affair remains unclear.

The woman wrote a letter to the Microsoft board in 2019, revealing her romantic relationship with Gates that began in 2000 and lasted for several years.

Microsoft’s board investigated the women’s claims and deemed the relationship “inappropriate”, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000,” a Microsoft spokesman said.

“A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation. Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern.”

INDIVIDUAL STATES SENDING OUT STIMULUS PAYMENTS

The American Rescue Plan that President Joe Biden signed in March contains $350billion in state and local aid.

The US Treasury determined those funds can be used for direct payments.

California passed a stimulus program in February that grants residents $600 or $1,200 checks, depending on their 2020 tax returns.

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a second round of state stimulus checks would be distributed to those with incomes below $75,000.

In Maryland, individuals can get $300 and families can get $500 in direct payments based on their 2019 tax returns.