Metro

Former NYMEX boss hit with child-support suit

The multimillionaire former head of the New York Mercantile Exchange is a deadbeat dad, his ex-wife claims in a new lawsuit.

Donna Schaeffer, 56, alleges her ex, Richard Schaeffer, stopped paying the $45,000 annual child support for their 19-year-old daughter Rachel in October.

Donna, who split from the 61-year-old Richard in 2005, also says that her fat-cat ex owes her half of $10 million he’s made from seats he owns on the Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade and the Commerce Exchange.

She accuses her former spouse of “actively concealing” the profits.

The Lower Manhattan resident also never forked over a share of his $580,000 retirement fund to her, Donna claims in her Manhattan Supreme Court suit.

But Richard told The Post his former spouse is the greedy one.

“I’m wildly shocked,” Richard Schaeffer said Monday when he learned of the lawsuit.

He said he never cut off payments to Rachel and has always been generous to his ex-wife.

“I pay substantial money to my daughter. I pay her personal expenses, I wire her money whenever she needs it,” Richard insisted.

“I’ve paid for cars, houses in the Hamptons, health insurance, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,” he said.

He called his wife’s suit an act of “desperation.”

He noted that she filed another lawsuit against a former business partner in March 2012 for allegedly swindling her out of $1.5 million. That case is still pending in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Donna, who lives in a luxury, Sutton Place high-rise, refused to answer questions about Richard’s counterclaims.

Richard Schaeffer headed up the commodities exchange from 2006 to 2008 when it was sold, netting him a reported $26 million golden parachute.

For the past 11 years the semi-retired Wall Street honcho throws a New Years Eve party for bed-ridden children in the pediatrics unit at Weill Cornell Medical Center.

He is involved in other charities including the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Tomorrows Children’s Fund and Brianna’s Fund for kids with cerebral palsy.