Prime Divorce Settlement for Amazon Founder

Friday 5 April 2019

It has been announced that the founder of Amazon, and the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos has reached a settlement with his wife MacKenzie Bezos in their divorce for a reported record-breaking figure of (at least) $35b.

It appears that the Bezos’ were keen to use a collaborative model for their financial settlement discussions, a practice which is widely used in the USA and is becoming more and more popular in divorce cases in England and Wales.

In addition, despite their separation and divorce, the Bezos’ respective statements on social media display continuing warmth for each other.

How might the Courts of England and Wales have treated this level of wealth?

In many reported cases ultra-high net worth couples are often a wealthy businessman or woman who has built the family fortune up through his/her genius.

Sometimes this occurs prior to the marriage, which leads the ‘wealth creator’ to put forward a case that his or her contribution should get taken into account in the determination of how the assets should be divided; effectively that the family’s wealth would not be so high if it were not for that contribution and therefore he/she should get more of the assets as a result.

In the Family Courts of England and Wales successful special contribution arguments have been few and far between (no more than three in 17 years).

In the 2017 case of Work v Gray, a Texan millionaire William Randall failed in his Appeal before the Court of Appeal that his contribution was ‘unmatched’ by his wife and he could not convince the Court that his ‘genius’ should be taken into account

As is often seen, Mrs Gray’s contribution as the homemaker in the family was upheld as equal to the financial contribution.

In the Bezos’ case, if it were in our jurisdiction, any contribution argument would perhaps be as likely to fail.

Mackenzie Bezos was reportedly one of Amazon’s first employees, they married a year before the company was founded, have been married for 26 years, and have four children together.

Even if Mr Bezos were to say that his genius had created the family’s wealth, he surely had to have been given the opportunity to implement that genius.