Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon, and his wife, Summer, are the power couple behind the $128 leggings. They are getting divorced.
They were married for more than twenty years. While the world knows Chip as the Lululemon founder, Summer was the company’s founding lead designer, the mastermind behind the buttery-soft fabric that my generation of millennials effectively lives in.
According to Bloomberg reporting, there is no prenuptial agreement, and the combined fortune is roughly $6.1 billion.
After two decades of marriage in which both partners helped build and invest in multiple successful ventures, the interesting question is what happens to their intertwined business holdings when a fortune this large is divided with no prenup in place? How does that affect the businesses themselves?
$6.1 billion in marital assets have to be divided.
Start with Lululemon. Chip still holds roughly 8.6% of the company, worth about $1 billion in stock. In comparison, Summer independently owns close to 1% of the company, a stake worth around $100 million. Next is Amer Sports, the Finnish company behind Arc’teryx, Salomon, and Wilson. Chip owns roughly 18% of the company, a stake valued at nearly $3 billion. (That’s Amer Sports, the sporting-goods group, not to be confused with House of Wilson, the family holding company that manages the couple’s billions.) There is the real estate, including their Point Grey waterfront home in Vancouver, assessed at around $73 million.
How British Columbia Divorce Law will divide their assets.
The Wilsons are based in British Columbia, so BC’s Family Law Act, SBC 2011, c. 25, would govern the division of their property. Section 81 provides that, on separation, spouses are “both entitled to family property and responsible for family debt, regardless of their respective use or contribution,” each taking an undivided half interest in that family property. Section 84 broadly defines “family property” to include property owned by either spouse as of the date of separation.
In practice, the court does not treat Chip’s holdings separately from Summer’s. Instead, it combines the couple’s shared property, regardless of whose name appears on the stock, and generally divides it equally. Therefore, Summer’s shares are considered along with Chip’s in the overall division of assets.
There is a nuance that matters at this level of wealth. Section 85 identifies certain “excluded property” a spouse may keep, which is property owned before the relationship, along with gifts and inheritances received during it. The spouse claims the exclusion and bears the burden of proving it. But excluded property is not a complete carve-out. Under section 84(2)(g), “the amount by which the value of excluded property has increased” during the relationship is itself family property, and therefore divisible.
Most of Lululemon’s rise, and its occasional falls, happened while these two were married. So even assets that might be characterized as excluded could carry decades of shared, divisible appreciation. Absent a prenuptial agreement drawing those lines in advance, a court may end up drawing them instead. And because Chip’s holdings, based purely on speculation, dwarf Summer’s, pooling everything and halving it still points to a very large transfer in her direction.
Lululemon stock is down 17% and Chip Wilson is a major shareholder.
A divorce of this magnitude can become a corporate event due to potential stock ramifications. When a founder’s shares are up for division, their often significant chunk of stock becomes part of the conversation. Will Summer receive shares directly? Will Chip need to sell equity to fund an equalization payment? Each option raises crucial questions about ownership and voting influence that could literally be worth billions.
The news surfaced as Lululemon shares fell more than 17% in a single session on a weakened forecast, with a new CEO stepping in the same week and only after Chip had recently settled a proxy fight with the board, securing board nominees and agreeing to refrain from publicly criticizing the company for roughly eighteen months. Markets dislike uncertainty, and a no-prenup divorce touching a founder’s sizable stake is exactly that.
Chip Wilson built Lululemon: With no prenup, British Columbia divorce law will decide how the pieces align.
It would be easy, and wrong, to frame the takeaway as “someone should have protected their assets.” The fairness of an even split between two people who spent twenty years building these businesses is subjective.
What is not subjective is the difference between splitting value and splitting shares. That distinction is where a prenup for those not yet married and a postnup for those who already are married is essential. A marital agreement (either a prenup or postnup) doesn’t prevent a divorce or predetermine who “deserves” what, but allows a couple to decide, together and in advance, how business interests would be handled if the marriage ends. This can include keeping company stock and voting control intact, and making the other spouse whole with cash, real estate, or other assets of equivalent value, rather than forcing shares to change hands or triggering a sale. It can even predetermine the method for valuing the business so that the figure isn’t litigated in court.
In British Columbia, agreements respecting property division are expressly contemplated by the Family Law Act (sections 92–93). However, courts retain the power to set aside agreements reached through unfairness, which is precisely why full financial disclosure and independent legal advice for each spouse are essential.
Done properly, an agreement like this shields the companies and investments from being dragged into a public valuation fight, protects co-founders and investors interests, and safeguards the couple’s combined wealth against the fire-sale pricing and loss of control that a forced stock split can trigger.
Chip and Summer Wilson may well arrive at a division that is perfectly fair to both of them, out of court. Only their attorneys know what is really going on. The open question is how much turbulence the businesses they built will absorb along the way, given the uncertainty, and that is the part a plan could have settled long before it became a billion-dollar, very public question.
Own a business? Get a prenup.
You might not have $6 billion to protect, but 12.9% of HelloPrenup users own a business. A single afternoon of planning can keep it from being pulled apart in a divorce. A prenup lets you decide, in advance, how your shares, voting control, and business value would be handled if your marriage ends, protecting your co-founders, investors, and the wealth you and your partner have built together, instead of leaving it to a court and a public valuation fight.
You don’t need to be a billionaire for this to matter. If you own equity in anything, you have something worth protecting.
Not yet married? Start your prenup at HelloPrenup – attorney-built, affordable, and designed for founders and business owners.
Already married? It’s not too late. A postnuptial agreement does the same work after the wedding. See Postnup.com.
Julia Rodgers is HelloPrenup’s CEO and Founder. She is a Massachusetts family law attorney and true believer in the value of prenuptial agreements. HelloPrenup was created with the goal of automating the prenup process, making it more collaborative, time efficient and cost effective. Julia believes that a healthy marriage is one in which couples can openly communicate about finances and life goals. You can read more about us here Questions? Reach out to Julia directly at Hello@Helloprenup.com.
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