The 6th richest man in the world and Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, has filed to divorce his wife, Nicole Shanahan. Brin is worth $94 billion and has been married to Shanahan for 4 years. They both hired a private judge in January to dissolve their marriage due to “irreconcilable differences” and both crave privacy around the divorce.
Brin, 48, wants him and his soon-to-be estranged wife to co-parent their two-year-old daughter. He does not want spousal support from Shanahan and does not want her to demand it either. According to court filings, they have both agreed that their joint property will be shared in a manner to be determined based on “confidential binding arbitration”.
Brin hired Hanson, Crawford, and Crum Family Law Group to represent him while Shanahan hired Spector Law Firm, APLC, and Meyer, Olson, Lowy, and Meyers to represent her. The private and temporary judge they hired earns $950 an hour and another $300 an hour for a legal assistant. Hiring a private judge will speed up the divorce process and make everything as confidential as they want it.
“Because of the high-profile nature of their relationship, there is likely to be a significant public interest in their dissolution and child custody issues,” Brin’s attorney wrote in a filing. “Of great concern is that such publicity puts their minor child at risk of danger, harassment, and even kidnapping if the specifics of their day-to-day whereabouts are exposed to the public.”
This is the second time Brin would be divorcing a wife. He was formerly married to Anne Wojcicki from 2007 to 2015, and they have two children – Benji, 13; and Chloe, 11. Wojcicki reportedly divorced Brin when she found out he was dating a Google employee, Amanda Rosenberg, in 2013. Wojcicki was the co-founder of 23andMe. Shanahan is the founder of the Bia-Echo Foundation, an NGO devoted to environmental and social justice.
Brin and Larry Page co-founded Google – which is now called Alphabet – in 1998. But they both stepped down from their executive positions in 2019 even though Brin still has majority shares in the search engine company.