2024-05-05 06:43:29
When the news broke three years ago that Bill and Melinda Gates were divorcing after 27 years, perhaps the least surprised were those at the top of the rich list. They know very well that money cannot buy happiness in love.
Billionaires divorce just as often as the less mobile inhabitants of the planet. According to the findings of Forbes magazine after examining the relationships of the 50 richest people in the United States, these billionaires said “I do” 72 times, and 35 of these marriages ended in divorce, which equals 49 percent. The overall average in the US is between 40 and 50 percent, and in the Czech Republic between 2011 and 2019, 45 to 48 percent of marriages ended in divorce. Purely statistically, even the separation (yet not divorce) of the head of the ANO movement and entrepreneur Andrej Babiš with his wife Monika, announced the day before last Friday, is not a surprise.
But the break-ups of billionaires’ relationships have their peculiarities. Property settlements often present quite complex legal challenges. Babišová represented the interests of a former partner in trust funds that manage Agrofert and other assets. When Babiš transferred him to them seven years ago, she became a member of the council of protectors in both. It is a body that supervises the administration.
Babiš can only remove and appoint one of the three board members in his funds, according to the statements of the administrators. The separation will therefore not affect the operation of the funds. “Babišová is not sitting on any assets, she cannot complicate things for him in any way,” lawyer Alexej Bílek, administrator of one of the trust funds and member of the board of directors of Agrofert and Synbiol, told Deník N.
At this point, no one, with the possible exception of the spouses and their attorneys, knows how the property settlement will be, if there is one. According to Forbes magazine, the value of Babiš’s property is 82 billion crowns. Already at the time of the marriage in 2017, it should have been clear that Monika Babišová would only get access to property that Babiš did not transfer to the trust fund due to a conflict of interests.
The question is whether the spouses concluded a prenuptial agreement. Even then, Babišová stated in the media that she had not seen one, but this does not mean that it could not have been created later.
10 thousand prenuptial agreements
According to Radim Neubauer, president of the Chamber of Notaries, adjusting the property regime of spouses before marriage is already a fairly common step. “However, people have a contract drawn up by a notary even during their marriage, especially when the spouses’ financial situation changes, or they expect such a change, when one of the couple starts a business and wants to protect the family from possible failure, or when the spouses they plan to buy more valuable assets,” says Neubauer.
Last year, 9,809 Czech couples signed a prenuptial agreement. They make the most of the possibility to completely separate their finances and property, to a lesser extent they separate specific items from it. According to the Chamber’s data, these are usually more valuable assets in the order of hundreds of thousands, but rather millions to ten million crowns. “In other words, real estate, cars, possibly shares and investments,” adds Neubauer. According to him, people who have had a bad experience with divorce often take out a contract before entering into a second marriage.
It depends on whether and how the couple agrees. Gates’ fortune was $130 billion at the time of the divorce, and according to the media, he did not have a prenuptial agreement with Melinda. Today, his net worth is $128 billion and his ex-wife’s net worth is $11 billion.
The couple released a statement after their divorce saying they would continue to work together on their joint projects, notably the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is one of the largest private charities in the world and focuses on solving global problems such as poverty, healthcare and education. Today, he has a fortune of 67 billion dollars.
The divorce was expensive for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. In 2019, he and MacKenzie Scott celebrated their 25th anniversary, and she took a four percent stake in the named world’s largest online store for a new phase of life. Today, Forbes magazine estimates her fortune at $32 billion. However, she gave up a large part of the money to charity. According to the Yield Giving portal, it has donated $17 billion to more than 2,300 non-profit organizations to date.
In 2007, the Czech Republic watched with interest the divorce of today’s sixth richest Czech, Radovan Vítek. At stake was a lawsuit for a record sum of 3.6 billion crowns, filed by his wife at the time, Eva. To help with the dispute, the Merone company was hired, which, in case of success, was to receive a quarter of the settled amount, i.e. 906 million. As insurance, Vítková signed an incomplete promissory note in favor of Merone.
However, the couple agreed on a settlement of 50 million crowns, and the story had one more act a decade later. After Vítková, businessman Rostislav Pokluda asked for the payment of the bill. In 2011, the court even issued a payment order, and it already looked like Vítková would really have to pay the astronomical amount. But the police began to prosecute Pokluda and he went to prison for five years for attempted fraud. According to the court, only 12.5 million crowns belonged to him.
Three years ago, the divorce of the owner of the e-shop Alza Aleš Zavoral ended in court. Lidija Zavoralová demanded alimony of several hundred thousand a month from her husband. The court finally awarded her alimony.
When emotions prevail
So not all divorces of the rich are peaceful like those of Gates or Bezos. “You’re still dealing with the same human emotions and problems,” Michael Mosberg, a partner at the New York family law firm Aronson Mayefsky & Sloan, which is used by the ultra-wealthy, recently told Forbes. “Wealth doesn’t protect you from that,” he said.
When bond king Bill Gross split from his wife of three decades in 2016, their divorce immediately became an ugly spectacle. The couple fought in court and tried to outbid each other in the real estate market. After Sue Gross acquired a house in Laguna Beach, for example, her ex-husband allegedly stuffed dead fish into the house’s air conditioning system before handing over the property, which he denied at the time. Gross ended up walking away with more than $1 billion, custody of the couple’s two cats and part of their art collection.
“Marriage, just like divorce or separation, is an event that has a significant impact on the integrity of assets,” says Petr Laštovka, founder and managing partner of EMUN family office, which is dedicated to managing the assets of important clients and works with families whose assets exceed 300 million crowns.
“We work with our clients on the adjustment of the spouses’ joint property and a clear record of what belongs to it. We update this regularly. We help organize multigenerational property that should not be in personal ownership into trusts or foundations,” he adds.
Mobile Czechs are therefore advised to prepare for the possibility of divorce. “Rather, it should be like that. Responsibility grows with wealth, and for the wealthiest, it is also a social responsibility, because their wealth employs a significant part of the Czech population, and the stability of wealth is therefore systemically important,” he concludes.