Bill Gates May Have to Part With His Lavish Private Island in Divorce. Here's How Much It's Worth

Bill Gates is still one of the world’s richest people - even after he announced his divorce from his wife, Melinda. The Microsoft co-founder and his wife Melinda said that they would continue to work together at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the worlds largest private charitable foundation. The announcement comes in identical tweets, where they said they had made the decision to end their marriage of 27 years. Bill Gates was formerly the worlds richest person and his fortune is estimated at well over $100 billion. How the couple end up settling their estate and any impact on the foundation will be closely watched, especially after another high-profile Seattle-area billionaire couple recently ended their marriage.

In a joint petition for dissolution of marriage filed in King County Superior Court in Seattle, the couple stated: “The marriage is irretrievably broken." Bill Gates was formerly the worlds richest person and his fortune is estimated at well over $100 billion. How the couple end up settling their estate and any impact on the foundation will be closely watched, especially after another high-profile Seattle-area billionaire couple recently ended their marriage.

According to Reuters, the divorce filing, which states that the couple have no minor children, comes after the youngest of their three children is believed to have recently turned 18. The spouses asked the court to approve their agreement on the division of assets but did not disclose details. That didn’t stop the general public from prying - and for Googling the obvious - how much is each person taking away? One of the top queries on Google India in the last 1 day, spiking at the time of announcement (IST) was the question - ‘Microsoft share price.’

Ever since the news broke, there have been speculations about what the billionaire couple will split their estate worth USD 130 billion. As per reports, Melinda did not sign a prenuptial agreement with Bill, who is currently the fourth richest person in the world. Bill was formerly the world’s richest person and his fortune is estimated at well over $100 billion. Now, he is the world’s fourth-richest person with a net worth of $130.5 billion, according to Forbes.

One of Bill Gates’ assets is a private island. The island, called ‘Grand Bogue Caye’ which is located in Belize, is around 314-acres in size and was bought by Gates in 2006 for £13,399,800. The current value of the island, according to SpaSeekers is £18,116,102.SpaSeekers methodology to calculate the price involved the year and price when purchased of each island were sourced in the currency available for each property in either pounds or dollars. This was then converted using the historical exchange rate to find out the island’s price in the opposing currency. This was also done for the value of the property using the year of purchase and rate of inflation to find out its current value in dollars and pounds.

Bill Gates’ biographer James Wallace, who wrote two books on the Microsoft founder in the 1990s, has revealed that Gates used to host strippers in some “wild parties" back in the day. Wallace now wonders whether Gates will resume his partying, now that his marriage with Melinda is over. In an interview with DailyMail.com, Wallace claimed that it was wrong to assume that Gates was a “choir boy" during his early days. The 74-year-old said, “A lot of those Microsoft kids back then, they were young guys in pizza-stained t-shirts for two or three days working on software code. Then they would have some pretty wild parties, where they would go out and get strippers in Seattle and bring them over to Bill’s home."

He also said that Gates would go to “one of Seattle’s all-nude nightclubs and hire dancers to come to his home and swim naked with his friends in his indoor pool."

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