MacKenzie Scott, a billionaire philanthropist, and her husband, Dan Jewett, a former science teacher, are divorcing less than two years after announcing their intention to give away a vast fortune together. Dan Jewett has been teaching science for the past twenty years.
A petition for divorce was submitted by Ms. Scott on Monday in the King County Superior Court in the state of Washington, according to a copy of the document that was made public. The split brings to a close a tumultuous time in Ms. Scott’s life. In less than four years, she has been through a divorce from her longtime husband, the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, given away more than $12 billion to charitable organisations, and married an instructor at the prestigious school where her children are enrolled.
According to the documents filed with the court, Mr. Jewett did not challenge the divorce. According to the petition, any distribution of property is outlined in a separation contract that has been agreed upon by both parties and is kept private. According to the application, both parties continue to call King County, which includes the city of Seattle, home.
After Ms. Scott’s divorce from the richest man in the world, the public’s attention was focused on the couple’s marriage, which had also been a philanthropic partnership, with Mr. Jewett publicly promising to join her in donating their enormous fortune to charitable causes. This marriage garnered significant public attention.
Recent evidence, however, suggested that the collaboration was no longer active. In the past, appreciative charitable organisations that had received funds from Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett praised both of them, but in more recent times, beneficiaries have only recognised Ms. Scott.
Over the course of the previous week, she has removed his name from all of her charitable activities. On the website for the Giving Pledge, where wealthy individuals make a public commitment to donate at least half of their fortune to charitable causes before they pass away, his letter is no longer displayed alongside hers. Recent events have resulted in his name being removed, without any fanfare, from a Medium article that Ms. Scott had published last year about their presents.
She started donating large sums of money at an unprecedented rate for the charitable sector, which catapulted her to the forefront of international headlines. Following the conclusion of her marriage to Mr. Bezos, Ms. Scott secretly put together a team of advisors and started making gifts to charitable organisations in the amount of multiple millions of dollars. In only three years, her payments reached more than $12 billion.
According to the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive, which saves older versions of web sites, his message was still paired with hers on the site as recently as a week ago. The letter was accompanied with a picture of the two of them seeming to be on a walk together. Today, there is little more than a portrait of Ms. Scott’s head and a copy of her letter.
The California Community Foundation was the recipient of a gift from Ms. Scott consisting of two residences in the Beverly Hills area with a total value of $55 million. The grant-making operations of the foundation that are related to affordable housing will get ninety percent of the value of the properties. There was no mention of Mr. Jewett anywhere in the press release, despite the fact that his name had appeared in previous gift announcements.
According to the documents filed for their divorce, the pair tied the knot in the state of California in 2021. Even Mr. Jewett’s friends and colleagues were caught off guard by the announcement of their marriage, which resulted in a frenzy of press coverage that well beyond his expectations. Reporters even arrived on the Lakeside campus to cover the story. Mr. Jewett thought that his continued presence on campus constituted a disruption, despite the fact that he had completed the semester there.