Billionaire philanthropist Mackenzie Scott and her husband, former science teacher Dan Jewett, are parting ways less than two years after announcing their intention to donate their vast fortune together.
Scott filed for divorce in Washington’s King County Superior Court on Monday, according to a copy of the paperwork. Scott divorced her longtime husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, in less than four years, and she donated more than $12 billion to nonprofits and became an instructor at her children’s prestigious school. Married. .
According to court records, Mr. Jewett has not contested the divorce. The division of property was set out in a separation agreement the couple agreed to, but it hasn’t been made public, according to the petition.
Their marriage, which made headlines in the public eye after Ms. Scott divorced the world’s richest man, is also a philanthropic partnership, and Mr. Jewett will join her in donating his vast fortune to a good cause. publicly promised to
However, there have been recent signs that the partnership no longer exists. Previously, the grateful nonprofit that received grants from Ms. Scott and Ms. Jewett thanked both, but the most recent recipient only thanks her.
His name disappeared from her charity last week. His letter no longer appears with her on her Giving Pledge site, where the billionaire promises to donate half of her fortune before she dies. Without fanfare, his name was recently redacted from a Medium post Ms. Scott wrote about their gift.
The novelist Scott also removed Jewett from her author profile on Amazon, the online retailer that is the source of her vast wealth.
Personal life of Mackenzie Scott
The novelist is one of the world’s most important philanthropists.
She gained global attention as she began donating money at a pace rarely seen in the philanthropic world. After his divorce from Bezos, Scott assembled a team of advisors and quietly began donating millions of dollars to nonprofits. This totaled over $12 billion in just three years for her.
In a May 2019 letter about the donation pledge, Scott promised to “keep doing it until the safe is empty.”Bloomberg estimated her net worth It was as high as $62 billion, but between her multi-billion dollar donations and the stock market crash, her fortune is now valued at $27.8 billion.
Two years later, in his own Giving Pledge letter, Jewett sounded enthusiastic. “I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know and have pledged to inherit vast financial wealth to serve others,” he said. I am writing.
However, he has also been open about his philanthropic priorities because he “never attempted to amass the kind of wealth necessary to feel special about saying something like that.” He said he had never considered making a statement.
According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which stores old versions of webpages, his letter was twinned with hers on the site as recently as last week, with a photo of what appeared to be the two going on vacation. It was served. Hike together. Today, I have Scott’s headshot and her letter.
Scott has refused to speak publicly about his donation and has turned down repeated requests for interviews from news outlets such as The New York Times. Her attorneys said she did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.Efforts to reach Jewett through her friends, family and former colleagues and at an address associated with him in Seattle failed. I did not go. His attorney, through her legal assistant, declined to comment on her divorce.
In a lengthy post on Medium, Scott announced his philanthropic efforts, naming organizations that have cumulatively received billions of dollars.
Scott last month Gave two homes in Beverly Hills, together valued at $55 million and awarded to the California Community Foundation. The Foundation’s Affordable Housing Grant Creation feature receives 90% of the property’s value. Jewett’s name, which was announced in a recent gift, was nowhere to be found in the news release.
The Health Forward Foundation of Kansas City, Missouri, said on Tuesday, received a gift of $15 million From Scott.Episcopal Health Foundation of Houston also recently announced Receiving a $20 million grant from Scott. Neither announcement mentions Jewett.
Jewett taught at Lakeside School, the famous Seattle private school attended by the Bezos children, and was popular with students and fellow teachers.
“He’s serious and not very nervous,” said Angela Royle, who met Jewett through a mutual friend. Royle, who drove with Jewett for weeks in a small car from London to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in 2014, recalled a mutual friend telling him years later, after marrying Scott: rice field. You end up donating this money — no greed at all.
The couple got married in California in 2021, according to the divorce filing. The news of their marriage surprised even Jewett’s friends and colleagues – the reporter even showed up at the Lakeside campus, creating a flurry of news coverage that far exceeded his expectations. Jewett, however, found himself distracted on campus.
His new wife has become the world’s most influential philanthropist, with an approach that emphasizes large grants (often the largest single gift the group has received).
In a Giving Pledge letter published in March 2021, Jewett wrote:
In June 2021, Scott posted to the media about her donation, writing: Somewhere in the past week, a search of her archives on the Internet revealed that the post had been edited and Ms. Jewett’s name had also been removed from it.
Kitty Bennett Contributed to research.