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Oil Billionaire Harold Hamm's Divorce Could Be World's Most Expensive At Over $5 Billion

This article is more than 10 years old.

Any pop culture enthusiast worth their Netflix renewal fee remembers Ivana Trump's cameo in The First Wives Club, the hit 1996 film about middle-aged divorcees, when she uttered her now-famous mantra: "Don't get mad, get everything."

How much the jilted ex-model actually got in her divorce from The Donald was never made public but Ivana did have a prenuptial agreement, albeit one she disputed. The pair settled and Ivana was awarded multiple properties and annual alimony.

Fast forward to 2013, when a prenuptial agreement is again at the center of a very public billionaire divorce. This time, the jilted wife in question could get, well, "everything", or near enough: the biggest settlement in history, worth over $5 billion.

On Friday, Reuters published an exhaustive investigation into the impending divorce of Oklahoma oil mogul Harold Hamm. As of Forbes' 2013 World's Billionaires list, Hamm is worth $11.3 billion, the vast majority held in shares of his oil giant Continental Resources, the biggest player in the booming Bakken shale region of North Dakota.

His second wife, lawyer and economist Sue Ann Hamm, filed for divorce last year; she has since alleged that Harold was cheating on her, per Reuters' reporting. The news wire posits that if the couple didn't sign a prenuptial agreement, Sue Ann could receive half of Harold's 68% stake in Continental. In essence, the entirely self-made oilman could lose control over the company he founded in 1967.

At Friday's closing price -- one that dipped about 3% on news of the impending split -- Sue Ann's slice of the NYSE-listed firm is worth upwards of $5.3 billion. No billionaire divorce settlement Forbes has uncovered over our years of tracking the super-wealthy comes close to that sum.

That's not to say that Sue Ann will necessarily be awarded exactly half of Harold's fortune. Oklahoma's divorce law calls for "equitable distribution", meaning the court decides what's fair. They'll take into account the couple's 25 years of marriage, two children and Sue Ann's years as an executive at Continental where, as Reuters notes, she created oil and gas marketing units among other key roles.

Since news of the Hamm divorce broke, analysts have puzzled over the long-term implications for Continental's stock. The company didn't return Forbes' call for comment, but the following statement appeared on Continental's website just as Reuters posted its piece:

"Today, Harold Hamm has announced that a petition for divorce is pending in the District Court of Oklahoma County.  This private matter has not and is not anticipated to have any impact or effect on the Company's business or operations."

Reuters compares the potentially record-breaking Hamm settlement to that of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who they claim paid out $1.7 billion to ex-wife Anna Murdoch (now Anna Mann) in 1999. Forbes couldn't find evidence that Murdoch parted with nearly that much and no figures were ever made public. A New York Magazine profile on the Murdoch family pegs the number at far less: around $200 million, by no means chump change. In fact, $200 million is the amount Revlon billionaire Ronald Perelman paid out in total to his four ex-wives.

In a 2006 Forbes piece, my colleague Luisa Kroll chronicled corporate raider Perelman's uncanny ability to pay out relatively little in his frequent divorces, the most recent being from actress Ellen Barkin, who reportedly settled for $20 million. With his current net worth of $12.2 billion, Perelman has ceded only 1.6% of his fortune in the dissolution of four marriages.

Perelman is one of six members, at Forbes' last count, of the billionaire fourth-wife club. My colleague Bruce Upbin took a look at the members of our rich list with multiple marriages, including charts showing age disparity. (Perelman has since married a fifth time.)

For more on the biggest and most scandalous divorces of the super-rich, read on.

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