Unless you're more emotionally invested in their marriage than would be healthy, you've probably already made peace with the fact that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie have split up. They filed for divorce a few months ago, and now the former couple's staggering $38 billion settlement is to be finalized by a judge this week.
As per the terms of their divorce, MacKenzie is getting a four percent stake in the company her ex-husband started, a stake that was most recently reported by Bloomberg to be worth some $38 billion. That will officially place MacKenzie among the richest women of all time, and now all that remains is one final formality in the form of a judge's stamp.
The four percent Amazon stake is worth a ton of money, but it's actually less than what MacKenzie Bezos could have gotten by law. Back in April when the terms of their divorce were made public, she announced that despite state laws in Washington entitling her to a full fifty percent of the Bezos fortune, she was letting Jeff have all of her shares in The Washington Post and the Blue Origin space exploration company, as well as 75 percent of the Amazon shares the two owned.
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That leaves four percent of Amazon, which MacKenzie has in turn pledged to give away at least half of, signing onto the famous billionaire Giving Pledge shortly after the divorce was announced. Interestingly, Jeff Bezos is one of the few high-profile billionaires not to sign on to the Giving Pledge, but he did take to Twitter to applaud his ex's decision to do so:
"MacKenzie is going to be amazing and thoughtful and effective at philanthropy, and I'm proud of her. Her letter is so beautiful. Go get 'em MacKenzie."
Additional details of the couple's settlement aren't expected to surface as it gets finalized by a judge this week, but Amazon will be required to disclose the transfer of shares over to MacKenzie to regulators.
