Tragic Details About Jeff Bezos' Ex-Wife MacKenzie Scott

Although Jeff Bezos is front of mind where the meteoric rise of Amazon is concerned, the multi-billionaire's ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, also played a pivotal role in both its genesis and ascension. In 1994, just one year after marrying him, Scott joined Bezos in quitting a cushy job in New York City with the hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. to pack up, move west, and start the business. The company was ultimately launched as an online bookstore from the couple's rented home in Bellevue, Washington, evolving through the years into one of the world's most valuable and recognizable brands and a tech/media powerhouse.

But where is Mackenzie Scott now? In addition to being an important piece to the Amazon story, Scott is an award-winning author, philanthropist, mother and, following her 2019 divorce, one of the richest women in the world. According to Forbes' 2025 list of the world's wealthiest people, Scott is the 13th richest woman in the world with a net worth of $28.2 billion.

That's not to say that Scott hasn't encountered her share of speed bumps along the way. From early family trouble and one of the most highly publicized marriage dissolutions in recent memory to targeted call-outs from one of the world's most powerful people and more, here's a look at some of the tragic tales from Scott's storied life.

One of three children, MacKenzie Scott was born in 1970 to Holiday Robin and Jason Baker Tuttle in San Francisco, where her father made waves of his own in the financial sector. However, by the time Scott was eyeing an English degree from Princeton University, she was working multiple jobs to pay her way through school. That's because Tuttle was forced to file personal bankruptcy as well as bankruptcy on behalf of his investment firm — The J. Baker Tuttle Corp. — in 1987.

Due to Tuttle misappropriating clients' funds, Administrative Law Judge Brenda P. Murray and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later revoked the investment advisor registration for Tuttle's business, and he was barred from having any association with investment advisors. Court documents state that Tuttle's "lavish spending" was the reason his firm, which had previously handled more than $150 million in accounts, was unable to refund money that was owed to clients.

In the wake of the scandal, the Tuttle family left San Francisco and California altogether, moving to the Palm Beach, Florida, area, where Tuttle was originally from. As noted by the Daily Mail, Scott has alluded to past financial hardships over the years.

Long before she helped her former husband launch Amazon as the web's go-to book peddler, MacKenzie Scott was well on her way to a career as an author. Per The New York Times, Scott dove full-force into her writing at the age of 6 when she completed her first chapter book, a 142-page story entitled "The Book Worm." Unfortunately, the book was lost forever when it was destroyed in a flood — an incident that could be considered a precursor to the loss of those books she may have written had life not taken her in other directions.

Scott has published just two novels, 2005's "The Testing of Luther Albright" and 2013's "Traps." Her debut novel won praise, netting an American Book Award in 2006 and proving Scott's chops as a writer. However, it reportedly took her a decade to write, as Scott and Bezos were raising kids together and growing a business.

Of the decision to forgo a full-time career as an author, Scott told Vogue, "Writing is such a pretend profession. Nobody is counting on you at all. You can't pretend to be a lawyer or a teacher. It takes a lot of grit to continue." She continued, saying, "Kids, on the other hand, have an urgent need to be taken care of. After the third child, I knew I couldn't be the kind of parent I wanted to be and continue writing. Those years were just too busy."

On January 9, 2019, Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott released a joint statement via the former's X account: After having gone through a trial separation, the couple planned to divorce. The National Enquirer released a story featuring a scandalous rumor about Lauren Sánchez, a "Fox Sports" alum, and Bezos. The then-CEO of Amazon was accused of having an extramarital affair with Sánchez, who was married to Bezos' friend Patrick Whitesell at the time. The story included romantic text messages between the two.

What followed was a tabloid firestorm. In addition to outlets picking up the story worldwide, President Donald Trump joined the denizens criticizing Bezos via X and other platforms and putting his and Scott's marriage under a microscope. The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, later published a piece referring to the Enquirer exposé as a "political hit job." Bezos himself took to Medium the following month to accuse the Enquirer's parent company, then known as American Media, Inc., of threatening to publish intimate photos unless he dropped an investigation into how they were obtained and publicly stated that he had "no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces."

While the joint statement issued by MacKenzie Scott and Jeff Bezos said that they "would do it all again" even if they had known before marrying that they would eventually separate, there's little doubt that their divorce was an incredible blow to both of them. After all, the couple had been married for 25 years, raised multiple children together, worked together, and made an indelible mark on the world through the creation and building of their company. From the outside looking in, they appeared to have a dream partnership and an idyllic life before their divorce announcement.

Following their separation, the revelation of Bezos' alleged affair with Sánchez, and the end of the marriage, Scott and Bezos found themselves having to craft new arrangements for their family and finances as they began separate lives. In the end, Scott entered her new chapter with 25% of their shared Amazon stake, per USA Today, while Bezos kept 75%. However, Scott ultimately handed voting control of her Amazon shares over to her ex-husband and gave up her stakes in the Blue Origin rocket company and The Washington Post (via Reuters).

Despite the media frenzy that followed the dissolution of her first marriage to Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott didn't give up on the institution altogether. The Amazon co-founder married Seattle-based schoolteacher Dan Jewett just over a year later, in May 2021. The pair met at the school attended by Scott and Bezos' children. Jewett eventually added himself to Scott's Giving Pledge website as she looked to ramp up her philanthropic efforts, and, shortly thereafter, the word was out on their nuptials. The couple subsequently set about donating billions of Scott's money to a myriad of charitable endeavors. However, their union wouldn't come close to approaching the longevity of Scott's previous marriage.

In January 2023, Scott got divorced for the second time, having filed papers four months earlier. Scott and Jewett reportedly handled the details without the help of the courts, signing a separation contract to address the division of property and debts, which didn't include a request for spousal support. Family law attorney David Glass told People that Washington State law allows couples to keep such agreements "completely private," so there's no telling how Scott and Jewett ultimately decided to split their assets. While it didn't create the same level of hubbub as her first divorce, the ending of Scott's marriage to Jewett stole headlines once again.

The higher someone manages to climb, the farther they have to fall when they get knocked down (and the more people they have throwing stones). So just as Jeff Bezos was the target of President Trump's social media slings and arrows, MacKenzie Scott eventually found herself in the crosshairs of the man who would eventually become the figurehead of the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency — the world's richest man, Elon Musk. In May 2022, Musk slammed Scott via X, accusing her of donating to political action committees "posing as charities." That wouldn't be the last time he used his own platform to take shots at Scott, though.

Musk seemingly attacked Scott in March 2024 for her philanthropic efforts in a since-deleted X post, writing that "super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse" should be listed among the "reasons that Western Civilization died" (via KTVU). He later shared an X post about Scott's donations, adding the comment, "concerning." Whether Musk's criticism is due to philosophical differences, political differences, or something more deep-seated is hard to say. But it's difficult to imagine Scott appreciates the continual call-outs.

Make no mistake — as traumatic as her divorce from Jeff Bezos may have been for her and her children, MacKenzie Scott did not come out on the other end as a destitute mother. No, Scott got quite a bit of money from Bezos in their divorce. The Amazon stake she received was valued at more than $38 billion, and, again, she continues to rank among the wealthiest women in the world. Given that abundance of wealth, Scott has committed herself to helping others by distributing vast sums to philanthropic organizations around the globe. As the old saying goes, though, no good deed goes unpunished. To that end, Musk isn't the only one who has criticized Scott for giving away a stunning amount of her fortune.

Between 2020 and 2023, she donated more than $14 billion to 1,600-plus nonprofits — a move that some questioned as Scott didn't go through the typical, transparent process for such large-scale gifting. Rob Reich, a political science professor at Stanford University told Philanthropy, "Her lack of transparency is disempowering ordinary citizens from exercising their own agency to understand the role that big philanthropy plays in American democracy." Still, as noted by a three-year study on the donations' impacts, "These gifts have been transformational for recipient organizations."