Lululemon founder Chip Wilson’s $6.1 billion fortune could take a big hit in his no-prenup divorce.
Page F2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 7 September 2026
Billionaires lobby against a 5% wealth tax, one of them faces a no-prenup 50-50 split instead.
As it ran on the front
The filing is simple enough. Chip Wilson, who built Lululemon into a $6.1 billion fortune, did not sign a prenuptial agreement. In community-property arithmetic, that omission is why the New York Post can run a headline saying his divorce could cost him a painful 50-50 split. No prenup was signed to prevent it; that is the whole function of a prenup, and this one does not exist.
Ledger check: half of $6.1 billion, moved by divorce court, with no lobbying campaign, no ad buy, and no ballot measure required. The state's default marital-property rule does that for free.…
…(cont) Now the other ledger. On August 25, groups backed by mega-billionaires — Google co-founder Sergey Brin among them, venture capitalist Peter Thiel among them — launched an advertising blitz against a one-time, 5% wealth tax on California's roughly 200 richest residents. The tax sits on the November ballot as Proposition 40. Two committees carry the opposition: Building a Better California, and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes. By September 3, Jacobin had a name for the arrangement: a lobby whose only client is the billionaire class itself.
Run the two numbers side by side, the way this desk runs any two numbers. A divorce court, applying a state's default rule, can move half a fortune with no vote and no ad spend. A ballot initiative asking for one-twentieth that share, aimed at funding health care for people who are not billionaires, requires a paid campaign to stop it. The 5% is the figure that gets the ad budget. The 50% arrives on its own, no committee formed.
This is not an argument about Chip Wilson's marriage, hon. It is an observation about which claims on a fortune draw money and which do not. A spouse's claim to half draws no lobby, because a lobby has nothing to file against in family court. A state's claim to a twentieth draws Sergey Brin's checkbook, because a checkbook can be filed against a ballot measure.
The receipts do not say whether Proposition 40 passes. They say who is spending to make sure it does not, and how much smaller that ask is than the one a family court can grant without a single dollar spent campaigning against it.
“A divorce court can take half his billions with zero lobbying required, but a nickel 5% tax gets a whole ad campaign to kill it. That's not about protecting families, that's about who's allowed to touch the money. Half to an ex is fine by them; a twentieth of it toward somebody's hospital bill, and suddenly it's a crisis.”
“This isn't about protecting fortunes, it's about protecting job creators — a wealth tax like this drives investment out of the state, everybody knows that. Sure, it only hits about two hundred people, but that's two hundred people who could take their yacht money elsewhere. Did I say yacht money? That's not the messaging, scratch that.”
The receipts
California’s Proposition 40 would tax roughly 200 billionaires to fund health care for millions. Google cofounder Sergey Brin and friends have responded by inventing a new kind of pressure group: a lobby whose only client is the billionaire class itself.
· Billionaire-Backed Groups Launch Ad Blitz Against California Wealth Tax from the morgue, 25 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.