D’ough! A Manhattan baker has to pay his estranged wife almost $30,000 a month in alimony and child support, a court ruled yesterday.
Joseph Ayoub contended that he doesn’t have that kind of bread — but the state Appellate Division noted that he slept on a $50,000 mattress and paid $200,000 in cash for a Lamborghini in 2007.
He and Isabelle Ayoub “had an enormous lifestyle,” said the wife’s lawyer, Jerome Leitner.
The appeals court called it “extravagant.” “They resided in a six-story town house on East 70th Street in Manhattan, which they purchased for $6 million and then gut-renovated. They owned a vacation home in the Hamptons, situated on three acres of land,” the decision says.
The couple slept on a $50,000 mattress, and the speakers in their audio/video room cost about $150,000, the ruling says. The couple also “spared no expense” for their three kids, ages 3, 7 and 10. “Each child’s mattress cost approximately $6,500,” the decision says.
Joseph Ayoub founded Aladdin Bakers, which started as a small pita-bread bakery in Brooklyn and now does more than $22 million a year in business. He and Isabelle tied the knot in 1997, and she filed for divorce last year. Their prenup calls for her to get $2,500 a month in alimony for three years, but she contended she needed $52,658.80 a month to maintain her kids’ lifestyle, including $7,166 a month for food and $4,583 for clothing.
The judge presiding over their divorce case ordered Ayoub to temporarily pay $20,000 a month for an apartment for the wife, $7,500 a month in child support, $2,500 a month in alimony, as well as a host of other expenses.
Ayoub said that he makes about $722,000 a year, and that the payments and “the cost of his own lifestyle” would leave him $200,000 in the hole. But the judges, noting that in February 2007 he bought a sports car for over $200,000 in cash, said in their ruling, “By purchasing the Lamborghini, the husband confirmed his free-spending ways.”