[Firmwarrior]

If I may white knight for one of the most powerful men in history for a moment: It's entirely possible that Bezos and his wife just drifted apart over the decades and separated amicably. And half of that fortune was always Mackenzie's from the start, that's how marriage works in the USA.

[ceejayoz]

They announced the divorce one day prior to his having an affair hitting the news cycle.

[bee_rider]

I mean we don't know anything about the internals of their relationship, and "hitting the news cycle is" I guess just some arbitrary hassle from their point of view. We could suppose that they grew distant, they basically separated, he started a new relationship/affair, and then they formalized the divorce.

Regardless, their money was realistically getting split anyway, so the decision of when to start the affair probably didn't cost him anything.