Billionaire Seattle philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has filed for divorce from Dan Jewett, the science teacher she married in March 2021, according to a court filing this week.
Scott filed a petition for divorce in King County Superior Court on Monday.
The New York Times first reported the news on Wednesday, noting that Scott has scrubbed mentions of Jewett from various websites where his name appeared alongside hers.
Scott was previously married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, but the couple divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage. Jewett was a science teacher at Lakeside School, the exclusive North Seattle private school that’s best known as the alma mater of Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and where Scott’s children attended.
Scott, 52, is a novelist with a net worth of $34.9 billion, according to Forbes. Bloomberg puts the number at $27.8 billion, and has her ranked No. 41 on its index of the world’s richest people.
In the time since her divorce from Bezos, Scott has given away more than $12 billion to a wide range of charitable and nonprofit organizations. The effort is part of her commitment to The Giving Pledge, in which the ultra-rich publicly pledge to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.
Jewett’s commitment was previously on a web page featuring Scott’s Pledge letter. A photograph of Scott and Jewett together is also gone.
In his March 6, 2021, note, Jewett wrote that it was strange to be planning to give away the majority of his wealth because as a teacher he never sought to gather such status.
“Now, in a stroke of happy coincidence, I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know,” Jewett wrote. “And joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others.”
The petition for divorce filed by Scott says that she and Jewett have a separation contract that they are asking the court to enforce. Scott asks the court to divide real property, personal property and any debts and liabilities as set forth in that contract.
Scott’s multi-billion-dollar gifts have garnered a good deal of coverage over the past two years. She gave, for instance, $1.67 billion in July 2020; $4 billion in December 2020; and $2.7 billion in June 2021. In March, she announced donations totaling $3.8 billion in support of 465 nonprofit organizations.
Last December, she wrote an essay on Medium in which she said enough with the dollar signs as she sought to put the focus on what philanthropy means.
