While the cause of their split remains unclear, the youngest of the three Gates children, daughter Phoebe, turned 18 in September.
“It really has been more and more common,” Israel Helfand, who runs retreats in Vermont for wealthy people whose marriages are on the brink of failing, told Time.
“Many couples would remain in these ’empty shell’ marriages largely because separations were stigmatized, or couples didn’t believe in divorce,” she wrote.
Brown told the WSJ that while divorce rates in the U.S.