The CEO of an oil company was just ordered to pay his ex-wife $999.5 million in one of the nastiest divorce battles in recent memory. Judge Howard Haralson said that Harold Hamm must pay Sue Ann Hamm $322.7 million by the end of this year. The rest can be paid in installments of about $7 million a month. That will take about eight years. So that’s $7 million a month for the next eight years! After a lump sum payment of over $300 million. Staggering.
Remarkably, this exchange of funds is the result of a suit filed only in 2012 and a divorce trial that took only 9-1/2 weeks, according to Reuters. Mr. Hamm’s personal story includes being the last of 13 children born to poor Oklahoma sharecroppers. He is the 35th richest American. The Hamms were married in 1988 and have two children. Mr. Hamm founded Continental Oil (“America’s Oil Champion”), the source of his wealth, 20 years before the marriage.
