Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest person and the CEO of Amazon, is getting divorced from MacKenzie Bezos, his spouse of 25 years.
Apparently, there was no prenup. And in Washington, where the couple lives, assets acquired during a prenup-less marriage are split 50-50.
Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos finalized their divorce in April. MacKenzie will walk away with 25% of the fortune and a net worth of about $36 billion. Her interests in The Washington Post and Blue Origin will be handed to her ex-husband, who will remain the wealthiest person in the world, as well as voting control over her remaining Amazon shares.
But if you're married to the world's richest person (Bezos' net worth is $137 billion!) who is entirely self-made, do you deserve to get half instead?
For MacKenzie Bezos, absolutely. For one simple reason: There would be no Amazon without her.
MacKenzie Tuttle and Jeff Bezos met in 1992 when they both worked for hedge fund D.E. Shaw. MacKenzie graduated from Princeton and became a research associate at the firm where Bezos was a vice president. Her office was next door to his, and three months after they began dating, in 1993, they were married.
While at D.E. Shaw, Bezos came up with the idea for Amazon. MacKenzie was supportive from the beginning, despite the high probability that his venture would fail (after all, almost all startups do).
Brad Stone writes in The Everything Store: "At the time, Bezos was newly married, with a comfortable apartment on the Upper West Side and a well-paying job. While MacKenzie said she would be supportive if he decided to strike out on his own, the decision was not an easy one."
MacKenzie later told CBS: "I'm not a businessperson. So to me, what I'm hearing when he tells me that idea is the passion and the excitement... And to me, you know, watching your spouse, somebody that you love, have an adventure — what is better than that, and being part of that?"
In 1994, at ages 30 and 24, respectively, Jeff and MacKenzie decided to blow up their cushy lives.
They road-tripped across the US in search of a new home and headquarters for Amazon. MacKenzie drove while Bezos punched out a business plan and revenue projections in the passenger seat. After starting in Texas and buying a beat-up car, they wound up in Seattle.
The pair brainstormed the name "Amazon" together after almost choosing a different name: Relentless.com. MacKenzie became Amazon's first accountant, despite being an aspiring novelist.
She did a lot of other grunt work, like most early startup employees do, from driving book orders to the post office to handling the company's bank account and line of credit. She met early Amazon investor John Doerr and partied with the team in Mexico after Amazon's IPO.
But beyond her early role in the company is the significant role any spouse plays in a partner's career.
Both Warren Buffett and Sheryl Sandberg say that the most important career decision you can make is who you marry.
Sure, there's the sacrifice one partner might make to allow the other to pursue a demanding career. But that's not what Buffett was getting at.
"Marry the right person," he said at the 2009 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. "I'm serious about that. It will make more difference in your life. It will change your aspirations, all kinds of things."
Would the notion of opening an online bookstore have taken hold of Bezos as forcibly if he hadn't met MacKenzie? Would he have executed on that vision in the same way, hired the same people and taken the same kinds of risks with a different partner?
These are impossible questions to answer. But it's not outrageous to suggest that a person's motivations, attitudes, and goals are influenced by the most important person in their life.
Regardless of whether a spouse is listed as a partner on a business masthead, many couples operate as a team focused on a grand, overarching enterprise and work in tandem to achieve common goals. That's part of the reason many state laws recognize the concept of community property.
Buffett has said that without his first wife, Susie, who died in 2004, he would not have built his fortune.
"What happened with me would not have happened without her," he said in a 2017 HBO documentary.
What happened to Bezos would not have happened without MacKenzie.
