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Billionaire philanthropist couple Bill and Melinda Gates filed for divorce on Monday after 27 years of marriage, saying &quot;we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple.&quot;</p>
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&quot;After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,&quot; the two said in a joint statement posted on each of their individual Twitter accounts.</p>
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In a joint petition for dissolution of marriage, the couple asserted their legal union was &quot;irretrievably broken,&quot; but said they had reached agreement on how to divide their marital assets. However, no details of the pact were disclosed in the filing at&nbsp; a court in&nbsp; Seattle.</p>
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Bill Gates, 65, who co-founded Microsoft Corp, and his wife, Melinda French Gates, 56, met after she joined the software giant as a product manager, and their courtship culminated in marriage in January 1994.</p>
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In their divorce petition, the couple asks the court &quot;to dissolve our marriage&quot; and to divide their communal property, business interests and liabilities &quot;as set forth in our separation contract,&quot; though that accord was not made public.</p>
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Bill Gates is the fourth wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes, and is worth $124 billion.</p>
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The divorce petition states that the couple have no minor children as the youngest of their three children turned 18.</p>
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Since it was launched in 2000, the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation has spent more than $50 billion over the last 20 years to fight poverty and disease.</p>
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The Gates couple has supported widely acclaimed programs in malaria and polio eradication, child nutrition and vaccines. The foundation last year committed some $1.75 billion to COVID-19 relief.</p>
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The Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation ranks as the largest private philanthropic foundation in the United States and one of the world&#39;s biggest, with net assets of $43.3 billion at the end of 2019, according to figures displayed on its website.</p>
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From 1994 through 2018, the couple gifted more than $36 billion to the Seattle-based foundation, the website said.</p>
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The Gates – along with investor Warren Buffett – are behind the Giving Pledge, which calls on billionaires to commit to giving away the majority of their wealth to good causes.</p>
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Last year, investor Warren Buffett reported donating more than $2 billion of stock from his Berkshire Hathaway Inc to the Gates Foundation as part of previously announced plans to give away his entire fortune before his death.</p>
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