An Oklahoma oil tycoon learned yesterday how costly his divorce will be. Cleve and I recently wrote about how a business owner’s divorce can impact his business and affect his partners. On November 10, 2014 an Oklahoma district court ruled in the case that inspired those posts.

Harold Hamm is a self-made oilman and the chief executive and majority shareholder in Continental Resources. His foresight and timely investments in the Bakken Shale formation and fracking technology turned his company into a powerhouse and made him a billionaire 18 times over. Today he might well be wishing that he had applied his foresight to his financial and family planning as well; due to a lack of a prenuptial agreement, his ex-wife was awarded over two billion – that’s “billion” with a “b” – dollars worth of marital assets, including a payment that Mr. Hamm must make to his wife of almost one billion dollars. The payment is so large that the presiding judge ordered that it be secured by a lien on twenty million shares of Mr. Hamm’s stock in Continental, valued at over one billion dollars.

This case shows the absolute necessity of business owners and wealthy individuals consulting a law firm with experience in family law and business about prenuptial agreements before getting married. Not only does Mr. Hamm have to pay his ex-wife one billion dollars in cash, but if he does not do so she may seize and sell up to twenty million shares of stock in Continental. While in this case the 20 million shares should not impact Mr. Hamm’s majority interest in Continental, it is not hard to imagine a similar situation where a business owner might divorce his or her spouse yet have to give them an substantial minority or even a controlling interest in his or her business – in other words, a business owner might get a divorce just to wind up back in bed with the ex-spouse – in a business sense, of course.

A copy of the Court’s 80-page long Memorandum Order can be found here.