William Adams and his late wife Fran were brilliant, diligent, and very fortunate. They were raised in solid, upper-middle class homes. Fran’s parents were both medical researchers, while William’s parents were both chemists. Whenever their four parents met socially, Fran joked, their conversations would, “bore the average person to death.”

Although brilliant in their own right, William and Fran followed very different career paths than those of their parents. But as their own academic success proved, they obviously shared the genius that was buried inside their genetic makeup. They met at the University of California Berkeley, where both of them pursued their doctorates in law at Boalt. After school, they kept in close contact and, in fact, dated occasionally, but their busy careers in corporate law kept them from making a commitment to merge their mutual attraction into a marriage.

When they both reached thirty-five, Fran, two weeks William’s senior, suggested that since neither of them had the time for a social life, it would be wise of them to marry each other.

In celebration of their marriage, they purchased their first joint asset: a mansion on Belvedere, California’s crowning street, Golden Gate Avenue. At the time, it was an extravagant step. The sale price was well over two million dollars, but their practices were promising and growing, so they took a chance.

It proved to be a good investment, like so many others they made together. Over the next twenty-five years, the home’s value increased more than tenfold.

The communities of Belvedere and Tiburon, which share a relatively small area of land in the lower southern portion of Marin County, are often referred to as “the peninsula.” Here, many of the gods of business and popular culture live side by side. While Tiburon is a wealthy township of approximately nine thousand residents and has its own share of well-known names like Robert Redford, and the late Robin Williams, the peninsula’s greatest wealth is found in Belvedere, the smaller of the two towns, where twenty-one hundred souls combine to make it one of America’s top three wealthiest enclaves.

In this atmosphere of great wealth, the tangle of narrow streets, paths and avenues that hug the very top of Belvedere is where one will discover the most rarefied air of all. Local realtors refer to it as “the platinum hill.”

Very few members of America’s one percent would not be delighted to own a home surrounded by the fresh air and stunning views that bless the edges of this golden isle. Here, extravagant mansions disappear behind stately pines, and lush vegetation tempts uninvited explorers to wonder about the grand lives lived within these gates.

Like many of the corporate mergers they helped to arrange, William and Fran’s marriage was built on logic as opposed to impulse. During the twenty-five years they’d shared as a couple, the outcome of these sober and serious efforts was the building of a solid life, along with an astounding fortune.

Several times they discussed starting a family, but Fran could not see the logic in it. “Taking the down-time to have a child or two would be too disruptive,” she reasoned. And William, of the mind that an overpopulated world needed more childless couples, was only too happy to agree.

Over time, the uncertain passion they both felt that led them to the decision that they were logical default mates for one another extended to the bedroom. Romance was nice, but it was not very practical when it stood in the way of making ever larger sums of money.

Ultimately, their staggering wealth had relatively little to do with their corporate law firm’s expanding list of Fortune 500 clients. Of much greater significance was William’s uncanny gift for seeing the one start-up high-tech firm out of hundreds that would be thriving five to ten years after their few months of incubation.

The Adams’ family portfolio grew faster than either he or Fran could have ever imagined. With a Google investment here, an early Apple bet there, a generous piece of Facebook’s IPO, and a wise early wager on Twitter to outperform expectations, one bet after another paid off handsomely. Even through the setbacks—bursting tech bubbles and recessionary economies—the Adams’ family fortune began to climb into the billions.

William suggested to Fran one night, “I suppose you could say that it’s not about our being rich or poor anymore. Now the money is just a way of keeping score.”

Every now and then, they would do something that for the average person of wealth would be wildly extravagant, but for William and Fran was little more than a line entry on their balance sheet. They each went to their parents and, in passing conversation innocently asked, “What’s your dream house?”

William’s parents adored a stone mansion with a small adjacent vineyard less than a mile off the Silverado Trail. Both Carl and Carol Adams were speechless when William and Fran took them to lunch one day in the small town of St. Helena and then drove them to their Napa Valley dream house.

It took Carl and Carol a few minutes to stop saying, “You two are just teasing us,” and to begin to believe that this two million dollar home was a breathtaking surprise gift from their wealthy son and daughter-in-law. “But we’re not ready to retire yet!” Carol said. Carl added, “And it’s too far to drive into work.” Given the fact that they were both now in their seventies, William wondered if the two chemists would ever declare themselves retired.

“Use it on the weekends,” William suggested, hoping to appease their concerns. “And in a few years, when you’re ready to retire, if you want to keep the house, it will be there for you. Or you can buy somewhere else. If the last twenty to thirty years is any indication, this property will keep appreciating.”

All four of them walked through the home, the vineyard, and the surrounding grounds. Later, as William told Fran, “The best part for me was watching Mom and Dad shake their heads in shock that we did this for them.”

“I know,” Fran said lovingly. “It was so much fun.”

The very next weekend they took Eileen and Sandy, Fran’s parents, on a similar adventure, this time down to Carmel By the Sea, the picture book Monterey County town at the edge of the Pacific, adjacent to Pebble Beach, where for years the two had enjoyed an annual two-week getaway in a small cottage that they rented every year. When Fran handed her mother the keys to that same cottage, they reacted with the same head shaking wonderment they had seen with Carl and Carol just one week before.

Having agreed after these two remarkable experiences that there was nothing more joyful than the act of surprising a loved one with something they never expected, William and Fran continued down this path. Both of them had nephews and nieces who were already applying to colleges, or soon would be. They happily announced to their brothers and sisters their desire to underwrite the education of their children, tuition, and housing expenses.

All told, the homes and the college expenses totaled less than eight million dollars, a rather insignificant sum to a couple whose fortune was now approaching twenty billion dollars.

Without any children, and so enthralled with the joy of giving, they began to consider how many good deeds could be accomplished by a foundation carrying their name, and they created the William and Fran Adams Foundation. Certainly neither of them was in a hurry to give their fortune away, but they realized, as exampled by others who had made their fortune in emerging technologies, there was much good that could be done with the thoughtful allocation of the bulk of their fortune; money that they could not spend in several lifetimes.

On their twentieth wedding anniversary, they gave each other the gift of a custom-designed and lavishly furnished mountain retreat near the shores of Lake Tahoe. It was a massive A-frame structure with a wrap-around deck for entertaining or for quietly enjoying the scenic views that surrounded them.

They were passable skiers, and certainly, they reasoned, a home near two of Tahoe’s top ski resorts would certainly help sharpen their skills. But the real purpose of the lodge was to encourage them to take at least a little more time away from the demands of the law firm and their private venture capital fund. Still, the occasions the two successfully escaped to their mountain retreat were relatively rare.

Substantial lives, legal genius, and a golden touch are all meaningless attributes when an off-course downhill skier collides with a tree. It creates an impact much like that of a misguided bird flying into the window of a high-rise building: an unexpected rush of air, the sickening thud of a life ending instantly, followed by an empty silence.

William saw Fran veer off course, but quickly convinced himself she would make her way down the mountain. They would meet and share a good laugh over her misadventure. Less than an hour later, with the sunlight fading and the temperature beginning to drop, the ski patrol began looking for Fran.

As they set off, William contemplated the unexpected thought of a future without his life partner. It was a something he had never considered in the two decades they’d been together. Of course, with their great wealth, the needed papers for the transfer of all rights and responsibilities was in place. As husband and wife, any amount of wealth transfers between spouses free of inheritance taxes, but none of that had anything to do with the confusion that William was feeling at that moment. Fran was far more to him than any balance sheet could reflect. She steadied him in times of uncertainty. She gave him the confidence to follow his best instincts.

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