Gates Divorce Roils World’s Biggest Family Philanthropy Engine

It started with a safari in Africa.

A young Bill and Melinda Gates, riding in the back of a truck, were on the continent for the first time in 1993 -- there to see animals, nature and discuss their priorities as a soon-to-be married couple. But what they saw sparked a broader conversation about the enormous fortune they’d already begun to amass.

“It was our first sustained look at extreme poverty,” Melinda said in a speech in Abu Dhabi in 2016. It was “the beginning of our education about the challenges facing the world’s poorest people.”

It was also ...