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Harold Hamm is an unlikely billionaire: the 13th child of Oklahoma sharecroppers whose identity as a self-made man could just be his downfall in his impending divorce battle. Hamm, the founder and CEO of Continental Resources, is the world's 34th-richest person in the world, with a personal fortune of an estimated $20.3 billion. The oilman is in the second week of a divorce hearing from his wife of 25 years, Sue Ann, and experts say the only way he can avoid paying half of his assets - and possibly losing a controlling share of his company - is to argue that his fortune is the result of sheer dumb luck. The amount divisible in the divorce settlement is $17 billion. Legally, if Hamm can prove that the appreciation of the marital assets was passive, rather than an active attempt by him to increase his wealth, then they will remain his property. 'You have a piece of vacant land before you get married, a separate property. If you do nothing about it and by passive acts it increases [in value], for instance they build a railroad next door or a road, fine, it’s passive,' prominent New York divorce attorney Raoul Felder told Yahoo Finance. 'But if you make a victory garden on there or you build a house, it’s now active.' In essence, for Hamm to keep the $17 billion in question, he would have to contradict the popular image of himself that he has projected for decades as an astute businessman and innovator and instead say he simply got lucky. | 
