By David Segal | The New York Times
During his nearly 50 years as an Oklahoma oil man, Harold Hamm has done everything on a huge scale. The chief executive and majority shareholder of Continental Resources, he owns the largest piece of the greatest oil discovery of our age, in the shale-rich plains of North Dakota. His net worth has been pegged at more than $18 billion by Forbes, making him the 24th richest man in the country.
Now another superlative can be added to Mr. Hamm’s outsize career: He is paying one of the biggest divorce settlements in history.
After a secretive, nine-week trial, a judge in Oklahoma City has ruled that the 68-year-old Mr. Hamm must pay nearly $1 billion to his ex-wife, Sue Ann Hamm. With the bang of a gavel, Ms. Hamm has joined the ranks of the wealthiest women in the United States.
Comments by Rose Law Group Family Law attorney Kaine Fisher: As with most people who read about the Hamm divorce, I find it really hard to wrap my brain around how much money and assets we are talking about here. I can only imagine how many hours the lawyers invested sifting through documents just trying to figure what the Hamms owned.
“But what I find most fascinating is that Oklahoma appears to have a law that distinguishes between money earned through skill as opposed to money earned because of changes in economic conditions or circumstances beyond the parties’ control – or what the author of this article refers to as “dumb luck.” This is foreign to me as this concept does not exist in Arizona unless negotiated by soon-to-be-married couples as a part of a premarital agreement.
“I can certainly appreciate the task Mr. Hamm’s lawyers had of making this billionaire oil tycoon look like Jed Clampett from the Beverley Hillbillies. I’m not sure what a “semi-private” court proceeding is, or how one was even possible in the face of strong legal precedent that insists that in most cases these matters be dealt with in a public forum, but I would have loved to be a fly on that wall.”
