A Manhattan sugar tycoon must take his lumps over a legal technicality and immediately pay his estranged wife $11 million all because he forgot to actually sign their revised divorce pact.
“I’ll be bankrupt before she’s done,” sugar-commodities honcho Daniel Rosenblum grumbled to The Post about his ex, former Ford model Sheila Rosenblum.
David Rosenblum says he thought he inked a deal last year that required him to make annual $5 million payments to his soon-to-be-ex-wife for the next 12 years.
But when she recently filed to have the agreement rescinded over various other issues, a judge agreed — because the signature lines were blank on the paperwork.
“I have no doubt there were very substantial negotiations, and it appears the parties were very close to entering into a settlement,” Justice Michael Katz said in Manhattan Supreme Court last week.
“It would have taken five seconds for the parties and their attorneys to sign it,” and they didn’t, Katz noted.
So now, Daniel, a deputy chairman at the sugar division of the commodities firm ED&F Man, must abide by the former couple’s 2013 agreement, which requires him to immediately fork over $11 million and the rest of the $61 million settlement over four years.
Daniel, 70, is now suing Sheila, 59, over the remaining $50 million payout.
“He can’t possibly make the payments,” his lawyer, Larry Carlin, told the judge, adding that meanwhile, “Mrs. Rosenblum, it’s no secret, has a huge net worth.”
But Katz wasn’t swayed.
Daniel, who declined to reveal the value of his own fortune, added to The Post, “Right now, she’s worth $120 million. She has 27 thoroughbred horses.”
He lamented that she also is receiving their $30 million Park Avenue apartment and another $90 million when he dies as part of the deal.
Sheila started Lady Sheila Stable, which owns and trains thoroughbreds, with Jill Zarin of “The Real Housewives of New York City.” Sheila made headlines when she paid $840,000 for a colt whose half-sibling is Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.
She declined to comment for this story.
The couple married in 1990, divorced four years later, remarried in 1996, and split again in 2014. They have two teenage children.