Mark Zuckerberg Marriage Timed to Protect His Billions?
Mark Zuckerberg married his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan Saturday after the IPO of his company, Facebook. The curious timing of his affairs- Zuckerberg made sure to get married after he had made his billions- has led some to believe he is protecting his assets as best he can.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan became man and wife Saturday at a small wedding of 100 guests at his Palo Alto, Calif. home. Guests were surprised when they showed up to what they thought was a surprise party for Chan, as she had just graduated from the University of San Francisco School of Medicine.
Instead, they were treated to a wedding. Coming only a day after Zuckerberg earned $19 billion, the timing raised some eyebrows.
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Because of California's communal property law, any assets earned within a marriage are divided mostly equally, unless there were a prenuptial agreement. If the Facebook founder didn't plan his wedding for after the IPO, it was quite the coincidence.
"The value of the company is absolutely known," Garrett Dailey, an appellate attorney of Oakland, Calif., told therepublic.com. "There is no dispute over it." For that reason, he supposed that it would have been smart for Zuckerberg to sort their agreement out "in advance" with a pre-nuptial agreement.
Even though the timing of the marriage seems to benefit Zuckerberg, there is a chance Chan could still lay claim to his wealth were the two to ever divorce. Because she has lived with the billionaire boy CEO for some time during their 9-year relationship, even moving to California for him, the new pediatrician could attempt to say she contributed to the company- and his assets.
"In California, people who live together without the benefit of marriage could claim they had an agreement to pool resources and efforts," Robert Blevans, a Napa, Calif. lawyer, said.
Zuckerberg has admitted that his sweetheart had inspired at least a small part of Facebook's workings. The new organ donation sign-up feature was the result of dinner conversations with Chan.
"Our dinner conversations are often about Facebook and kids, and the kids that she's meeting. She'll see them getting sicker, then, all of a sudden, an organ becomes available, and she comes home and her face is all lit up because someone's life is going to be better because of this," the CEO said on "Good Morning America" previously.
Despite the intense scrutiny of Zuckerberg's seemingly litigious nuptials, some have defended his decision. A friend who attended the wedding told the Associated Press that the "timing wasn't tied to the IPO," because the company going public was a "moving target."
Furthermore, there's no evidence that the two would ever see divorce.
Zuckerberg presented Chan with a "very simple ruby" and announced the news via his Facebook page.
