Will Jeff Bezos’ Divorce Make His Wife, Mackenzie, The World’s Richest Woman?

January 10, 2019

Jeffery Preston Bezos CEO, and president of Amazon who a little more than a year ago, became the world’s richest man is getting divorced. The American tech entrepreneur, on Wednesday took to twitter to make the announcement saying “We want to make people aware of a development in our lives. 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. 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 Enquirer and the New York Post later reported Bezos to be having a relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a former TV anchor and helicopter pilot and the wife of Hollywood talent agent Patrick Whitesell.

The New York Post also said Sanchez and Whitesell are separated and Jeffery’s wife, MacKenzie Bezos, was aware that her husband was dating Sanchez during their separation. Having been together twenty-five years and having four children, it is unclear at this time, whether or not the couple had a prenuptial agreement.

The state of Washington — where Amazon is based and the couple have a home — is a community property state, which means all property and debt acquired during a marriage “will be divided equitably by the court if the couple cannot negotiate an agreement,” according to the website of McKinley Irvin, a family law firm in the region.

Although other high-net worth divorce cases such as that of Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have left their company stakes unaffected, this divorce could reshape the global wealth ranking leaving MacKenzie with $69 billion, making her the world’s richest woman and resetting Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates ($92.5 billion), as the world’s richest man.