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Comment by bradenb | Hacker News Reader

From my perspective, his wife was there to help enable the creation of Amazon. Jeff Bezos entered a contract when he got married where he believed an equal division of assets made sense. He apparently believed that contract made sense for 25 years. Who are we to say now that she shouldn't be entitled to half?

> why would anyone stay married if they could gain $x billion from a divorce?

Why not? Two people share a pool of $50b (obviously it's not _that_ simple). Seems like plenty to me. Divorce means you are 1 person with your own $25b pool. Unless she was somehow prevented from using the shared pool of money I'm not seeing a huge benefit here. If her goals with money were so drastically different than that of her husband's then I think that's as valid a reason for divorce as any: diverging goals and interests.

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She helped build Amazon. She was there at the beginning, she drove him to Seattle to do it in the first place. She was with him for the whole ride. It sucks they split, but IMO the Bezos-owned portion is as much hers as his.

> From my perspective, his wife was there to help enable the creation of Amazon.

I don't know what she did or didn't do, so I don't want to discuss this case specifically. But the idea that your wife or husband contributes half of your work is not something I agree with. I understand that if one of them spent their whole married life prioritizing their home and family instead of their career so the other one could focus on theirs it makes sense to divide the assets using other metrics than who payed for it. But there have to be a limit, someone spending their days at home or out shopping is not worth millions or billions of their partner's money. After all, choosing to not focus on your own career is your choice.

Do you feel the same about negative things married people create? Should spouses share prison sentences if one of them commit crimes, like financial scams? If he would have been heavily in debt, should she share that too?

> diverging goals and interests.

I agree that's a valid reason for divorce. I don't agree that she should be entitled to 50% of his property (or that he should get 50% of hers, but it's a bit unequal in this situation).

> But the idea that your wife or husband contributes half of your work is not something I agree with.

If you believe that, you really shouldn't ever get married, most certainly not in a community property state. Washington state is a community property state, which means that all of Amazon is equally both of theirs, legally.

It's more correct to say that you shouldn't ever get divorced in a community property state. If Amazon were based in Texas, it'd be a very different situation. When it comes to divorce, it doesn't matter where you made the union, it's where you're dissolving it.

> But the idea that your wife or husband contributes half of your work is not something I agree with.

How do you know what would have been accomplished without that person's spouse managing the home? What if Jeff Bezos couldn't devote nearly as much time to Amazon if he had to take kids to appointments or be there when a contractor was at the house? And what if those diversions caused Amazon to be a flop? I would say that those contributions which were key to the success of the company absolutely do entitle you to 50%.

Now, I do think there's a legal argument to be made if that is clearly not the case, but a healthy person should have cut ties in that type of relationship before wealth was developed anyway. Presumably staying in the relationship after 25 years and after the accumulation of so much wealth meant that both parties were fine with an equal division of the assets.

> How do you know what would have been accomplished without that person's spouse managing the home?

How do you know she didn't have her own career and the multi billionaires didn't have hired help to take care of their home? Should she be entitled to less than 50% if she worked as a regular employee in the company and they shared their domestic responsibilities equally?

> I would say that those contributions which were key to the success of the company absolutely do entitle you to 50%.

Driving your own kids to activities and washing some dishes is absolutely not key to the success of a huge company, or any company.

> How do you know she didn't have her own career and the multi billionaires didn't have hired help to take care of their home? Should she be entitled to less than 50% if she worked as a regular employee in the company and they shared their domestic responsibilities equally?

Whether she had a career or not doesn't matter. If they found an amicable way to share responsibilities and during the entire 25 years of their marriage and Amazon's growth they became fabulously wealthy then it should be shared evenly. If Jeff Bezos felt like his wife was somehow undeserving of his wealth then he could have divorced her during the early years of Amazon's success.

> Driving your own kids to activities and washing some dishes is absolutely not key to the success of a huge company, or any company.

How do you know? Every moment you can spend working on your business instead of washing dishes is a moment you're contributing to your business' success. There's a reason for the phrase "Behind every successful [man|woman] there's a strong ____."

> But there have to be a limit, someone spending their days at home or out shopping is not worth millions or billions of their partner's money

I have a hard time believing anyone's time is "worth millions or billions".

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