On Friday, mortgage mogul Dan Gilbert and his wife Jennifer announced that they had filed for divorce. While their nearly 30-year marriage is now coming to an end, the couple had started laying out the groundwork for the split months earlier.
Gilbert, 63, started his first mortgage lender at age 22 with $5,000 earned from selling pizzas in college. His Rocket Mortgage is now the second-largest mortgage lender in the U.S. and he also owns 82% of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Gilbert, who debuted on The Forbes 400 in 2005, is the wealthiest person in Michigan with an estimated $29.8 billion fortune. He is known for his efforts to commit more than $7 billion to acquiring and restoring more than 100 properties in downtown Detroit and Cleveland.
Unlike other high-profile billionaire breakups in recent years—including the nasty fight between John Paulson and his ex Jenny—the Gilberts appear to be handling their divorce privately and collaboratively. “After 30 meaningful years filled with love and gratitude, we have together made the difficult decision to end our marriage,” the Gilberts wrote in a statement obtained by the Detroit News. “Our journey has been profoundly shaped by our love and devotion to our children — including the enduring memory of our beloved son Nick, in addition to our commitments to Detroit and Cleveland.”
Gilbert suffered a stroke in May 2019 that left his left side partially paralyzed, and he still uses a wheelchair. The Gilberts’ son Nick, one of their five children, died in May 2023 from neurofibromatosis, a rare genetic disease that causes non-cancerous tumors to grow on nerves throughout the body, likely putting an unimaginable strain on the family.
In April, Dan and Jennifer finalized a post-nuptial agreement that reportedly “resolved all issues arising out of the parties' marriage," and the divorce is uncontested, according to Crain’s Detroit Business. In June, Rocket Companies completed a corporate restructuring that redistributed shares in the firm held by RHI, a holding company majority-owned by Gilbert. The reorganization divided up the Gilberts’ Rocket shares, with Dan keeping 54% of the company and Jennifer holding roughly 15%. Dan maintains voting control over Jennifer’s shares, but they belong to her.
Rocket’s stock has risen 89% this year on the back of major deals including the $9.4 billion takeover of mortgage lender Mr. Cooper announced in March and the $1.8 billion acquisition of online real estate brokerage Redfin completed in July. That makes Jennifer, age 57, the ninth-richest person in Michigan—worth at least $6.4 billion, based on the value of her Rocket shares. She is now the 39th richest woman in America. It’s unclear whether Jennifer will receive additional assets including, say, a stake in the Cavaliers, which is held in a family holding company and still attributed to Dan Gilbert. A spokesperson for Rocket did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Raised in Huntington Woods, Michigan by a father who worked as a designer for General Motors and a mother who sold Mary Kay cosmetics, Jennifer had an early interest in interior design: as a child, she created elaborate fantasy houses for Barbie dolls. She initially planned to pursue architecture but instead earned a bachelor’s degree in interior design from Michigan State University in 1990.
Struggling to find work, she got a freelance design gig for Dan's brother Gary, who had cofounded Rock Financial—the first iteration of Rocket Companies—in 1985 with Dan. That's where she first met Dan, and the two eventually started dating. In 1992, she joined the firm as a full-time as a mortgage banker. Three years later, they were married.
Jennifer has since gone on to start her own businesses. In 2010, she opened Doodle Home, a virtual studio for interior designers; she sold it to online home furnishings portal Dering Hall five years later for an undisclosed amount. In 2015, she launched Amber Engine, a Detroit-based home furnishings services and tech firm, which she sold in 2022 to design materials marketplace Material Bank, again for an undisclosed sum. She still runs Pophouse, a commercial design firm based in Detroit that she founded in 2013.
She’s served on Rocket’s board since March 2020 and remains on the board of the Rock family of companies—the family holding company that also contains Gilbert’s stakes in commercial real estate firm Bedrock, online sneaker sale platform StockX and the Cavaliers. It remains unclear whether she will continue to be involved with these other businesses.
Dan and Jennifer have also been active philanthropists, signing the Giving Pledge—a commitment spearheaded by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett to donate more than half of one’s fortune to charitable causes—in 2012. Three years later, they founded the Gilbert Family Foundation to advance research on neurofibromatosis, the disease that led to Nick’s death. Altogether the couple, who are both trustees of the foundation, has given away an estimated $400 million to research of the disease as well as promoting housing stability and economic mobility in Detroit.
The Gilberts also launched another foundation, NFX, in 2017 to discover and develop targeted treatments for the disease. Jennifer serves as NFX's president.
Their single largest gift came in 2021, when Dan sold $500 million worth of shares in Rocket to fund a ten-year investment to aid community organizations and low-income residents in their home city of Detroit. The pledge was composed of $350 million from the Gilbert Family Foundation and $150 million from the Rocket Community Fund, Rocket's philanthropic arm. It’s already made a number of investments, including spending $15 million to eliminate property tax debt held by 20,000 low-income homeowners in Detroit and a $10 million, three-year investment to support local startup founders.
According to their statement, the couple will continue their philanthropic initiatives after the divorce. “As our relationship evolves, our friendship and partnership remain steadfast,” they wrote in the statement. “In this next chapter, we will continue working on our fight to eliminate neurofibromatosis and uplift the communities we both cherish.”