$ cat ./records/tax-filings-reveal-7-88-billion-divorce-payout-to-melinda-as-gate-2026.txt
Tax filings reveal $7.88 billion divorce payout to Melinda as Gates falls out of the world's top 10 richest
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Tax filings reported in January 2026 revealed that Bill Gates had paid his former wife, Melinda French Gates, nearly $7.88 billion as part of their divorce settlement. The disclosure, together with Gates's large charitable giving and his 2021 divorce, helped push his estimated net worth to roughly $104 billion — ranking him around 19th on global wealth indexes and out of the world's ten richest people for the first time in about three decades. Gates has repeatedly said he intends to give away nearly all of his fortune and fall far down the rankings as the Gates Foundation spends toward its planned 2045 closure. Melinda French Gates, who left the Foundation in 2024, was separately estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars.
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