Bill and Melinda Gates Divorce | What is "Gray Divorce?"

hello this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the report that bill and melinda gates are planning to divorce another question here is what is gray divorce just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so i'll start with the background in this case and then move to my analysis bill gates co-founded microsoft with a man named paul allen in 1975. gates was the ceo of that company until the year 2000 is the fourth richest person in the world in 1987 melinda gates was a product manager at microsoft bill gates met melinda that year after they ran into each other at a dinner during a trade convention in new york there were two chairs open melinda sat down the chair next to her was empty ten minutes later bill came in and sat down next to her during this encounter bill invited her to a dance club she turned him down months later at the microsoft headquarters bill encountered melinda again and asked her to dinner he wanted to set the dinner for like two weeks out she said that wasn't spontaneous enough and turned him down he called not long after that and invited her out immediately and she said yes bill and melinda gates would start dating they would marry in hawaii on january 1 1994. there was no prenuptial agreement between them even though bill gates was extraordinarily wealthy even at that point earlier in his career after their marriage bill gates would spend a long weekend every year at a beach cottage in north carolina with his old girlfriend linda was aware of this arrangement bill melinda would have three children together and go on to found the bill and linda gates foundation this organization provides resources to enhance education health and address climate change it has 1600 employees and has given away fifty billion dollars the couple owns a number of homes their main home is in medina washington it's a mansion that overlooks lake washington they refer to it as xanadu 2.0 it's worth 130 million dollars it has 66 000 square feet and a 23-car garage when the couple gets bored in their mansion they can always go to one of their many other homes like in san diego florida or wyoming they also own about 242 000 acres of farmland across 18 different states on may 3 2021 the couple announced they were getting a divorce in a statement on twitter they wrote after a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship we have made the decision to end our marriage over the last 27 years we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy productive lives we continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives we ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life linda gates filed divorce documents that same day we learn a few different items here from these documents the couple was already separated melinda wrote that their marriage was irretrievably broken she said that spousal support was not needed child support was not necessary either as their children are all over 18. apparently there's already a separation contract in place between bill and melinda the petition asks the court to divide the couple's property as specified in that separation contract it appears as though the couple will be dividing 146 billion dollars as i mentioned there is no prenuptial agreement in place in the state of washington couples who divorce are expected to share their assets equally this would make melinda gates the second richest woman in the world second only to the 67 year old owner of l'oreal it appears as though a trial will be held in april of 2022 both bill and melinda have retained a number of very expensive attorneys lawyers are the only guaranteed winners and a divorce as i mentioned after publicly announcing their divorce bill and melinda have asked for space and privacy which i find curious because those appear to be two things they have a lot of i'm sure they have a fairly robust security system around their home were they worried about their neighbors walking over and knocking at the door i guess i can understand the concern though the autonomous killer robots that undoubtedly patrol xanadu 2.0 are probably running on windows which means they are offline every other day for updates now moving to my analysis i find this circumstance fairly interesting considering that bill and melinda gates have been married 27 years and have three children i have been married 27 years and have three children other similarities between me and bill gates are not quite as aligned for example bill owns a porsche 959 a two million dollar vehicle it's quite rare i once saw a picture of one his company invented windows i use windows on my computer some people think bill gates is an alien lizard humanoid that's one of my favorite topics so maybe i can understand bill gates a little bit but he really operates in an entirely different world looking at this divorce when people hear of a divorce that occurs after a substantial period of time they often think that this must be a fairly rare occurrence it seems like a failure of something that should not have failed like why can't people work it out when they're married that long it's not just the length of the marriage it's also their ages at the time making this video bill gates is 65 and melinda gates is 56 so again a long duration of marriage and two individuals over the age of 50. the research literature has some interesting items on this topic before we get to divorces involving individuals 50 or over which are referred to as grey divorces let's take a look at the construct of divorce in general divorce is one of those topics that's actually fairly hard to study because divorces occur in many different jurisdictions many of them have different systems to track when couples divorce the true divorce rate is not actually known but the best estimate right this minute is 45 so 9 out of 20 marriages will end and divorce which of course doesn't capture how many marriages are unhappy that's just a divorce rate this 45 figure is not constant across all types of marriages for example remarriages are at a much higher risk for divorce than a first marriage now moving back to the concept of a gray divorce we see that grey divorces are on the rise the rate has doubled between 1990 and 2010. 25 percent of divorces in 2010 involved individuals who were 50 or older the divorce rate for someone who is remarried is two times higher than someone who is first married in the 50 and older population those who are remarried already 2.5 times higher risk of divorce compared to those who are first married the duration of the marriage is also important those who are 50 or older who are married 0-9 years have 10 times a greater risk of divorce than those married for 40 or more years the rate of divorce declines as marital duration increases certain demographic factors are associated with a greater risk of divorce as well for example there's a greater risk for those who do not have a college degree have low income do not have a home and are unemployed other factors don't seem to matter as much as researchers once thought for example the empty nest effect was once believed to be quite important there used to be this idea that a couple lost their sense of purpose once their children grew old enough to move out as it turns out that transition is not associated with an increased risk of divorce if we look at the risk factors and compare them to the situation that bill and melinda gates are in we see that they should have been at a relatively low risk they are both on their first marriage i think it's safe to assume their income keeps them free of any financial worries they have a long duration of marriage and as far as owning homes they own so many that one would think that the risk would be pretty low if that was the only factor it was based on the difficulty with looking at a couple like bill and melinda is that they are in a very unusual category in terms of their wealth and fame there are not many other divorces to compare however jeff bezos did go through a divorce under somewhat similar circumstances jeff and mackenzie bezos divorced after 25 years of marriage but just one couple is too small a group for any type of meaningful comparison so what could have happened in the case of bill and linda gates why get divorced after this long well of course i don't know but there are a few possibilities that came to mind i will review four here one this has been a long time coming like maybe they wanted to divorce for a while now but did not for any number of reasons i think sometimes for certain couples it's just easier to stay married so they ignore problems that come up they might say let's give it another few months let's give it another year if we can just hang on another decade things will work out two something dramatic happened involving a third party like one of them or both of them became interested in someone else three the priorities changed for one or both of them perhaps one party views the other party as holding them back that brings me to number four the last possible reason i'll go over here i think that the extreme wealth could have played a role i don't know if it did or not but here's the theory sometimes what keeps life interesting and exciting is the prospect and the journey of obtaining something new for example working hard to get an education to be qualified for a more fulfilling job perhaps a job that pays more money that education could take a long time two years five years eight years depending on the level what if an advanced degree only took 10 minutes to earn what would somebody do then maybe get another degree okay well that's just another 10 minutes what happens when the person gets all the possible degrees they could ever want when they can't learn anything more i think the same thing can happen around the area of money there's only so much money that someone can spend so much that someone can enjoy bill and melinda gates have tried everything in order to gain a sense of satisfaction and productivity earning money giving money away spending money on luxurious items building these fantastic houses buying farmland but in the end their money cannot actually give them a sense of purpose life can be boring for the super rich because they believe they can buy anything they could possibly want but what they want is actually beyond the capabilities of money perhaps divorce is just a way to shake things up to make things new and fresh again to place an unexplored area in their past those are my thoughts on the divorce of bill and melinda gates please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 502,908

Rating: 4.8383069 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Mu5ouVl5kdk

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021